Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer

Ewing sarcoma is the second most common bone cancer in children, and the treatment of Ewing sarcoma continues to rely on traditional chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation. Unfortunately, children who have Ewing sarcoma that returns after initial therapy or whose disease has spread to other places in their body, a process known as metastasis, often do not survive their disease. Immunotherapies are new approaches to treating cancer using the patient’s own immune system.

Background

This project will seek to understand adolescents' perspectives on weight changes during cancer therapy and early survivorship. This qualitative study will seek to identify, from the adolescent's perspective, what aspects of the cancer experience worsened or ameliorated their weight changes and their view of their weight change.

Background

Children can have psychosocial responses to ongoing traumas involved in being diagnosed, treated and monitored for cancer and treatment-related problems, which in turn could cause bodily responses like systemic inflammation, arterial stiffness and thus risk for cardiovascular (CV) disease. This is especially concerning for children whose therapy included an anthracyline; anthracylines have been linked with CV problems for a long time and CV disease is the leading non-cancer cause of death among childhood cancer survivors.