YES WE CANCER

Equipping families to manage and thrive during and after pediatric cancer.

Pediatric cancer treatment has gotten remarkably good. The survival rate for some childhood cancers is above 80%. But the family around the patient is in freefall, and the support system for everything outside the clinical experience — financial, relational, emotional, vocational — barely exists. Families are handed a medical binder and expected to figure out the rest on their own while managing the worst thing that's ever happened to them.

This project asks: how might we design a better way for families to navigate the realities of pediatric cancer, beyond the hospital walls?

Overview

We do ethnographic research. We sit with families, listen to how the crisis actually unfolds in their lives, and map the problems as they experience them — not as institutions categorize them. What that research surfaced was a set of deeply held norms standing in the way of better support: the assumption that the patient is the only one in crisis, that families should be resilient enough to manage everything else, that "support" means a pamphlet and a phone number, and that the emotional and financial wreckage is a private problem rather than a systemic failure. Those norms shape how hospitals design their services, how nonprofits scope their missions, and how families judge themselves for struggling. Our work starts by naming those norms, and then designing interventions that work within the environment as it actually is — not as a grant proposal wishes it were.

Approach

Logistics

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Timeline: 2024 - 2026

Position: Researcher & Design Strategist

Tools & Programs

Research Process

I conducted conversations with patients, caregivers, advocates, and subject matter experts to understand how individuals navigate diagnosis, treatment, survivorship, and the broader cancer ecosystem. These interviews helped uncover unmet needs, information gaps, and the role of the individualized experience.

In-Depth Interviews

I reviewed existing literature, industry reports, patient advocacy resources, healthcare publications, and community-generated content to understand current knowledge, identify recurring themes, and surface areas where research remains limited.

Secondary Research

I examined discussions occurring across online communities, support groups, and social platforms to better understand the questions people ask, the information they seek, and how peer-to-peer knowledge sharing occurs outside traditional healthcare settings.

Community Observation

I mapped the organizations, resources, communities, experts, and information channels that patients and caregivers interact with throughout their journey. This helped reveal relationships, dependencies, and gaps with broader support.

Ecosystem Mapping

I engaged with advocacy leaders, healthcare professionals, researchers, and community organizers to understand existing efforts, identify opportunities for collaboration, and gather diverse perspectives on systemic challenges, especially those outside of the medical field.

Stakeholder Engagement

I presented months of findings to my team, which led us to agreeing to develop further community resources. I am currently using said insights to produce a podcast, hosting professionals in order to bridge the information I have received and what is already out there.

Synthesis & Development

42%

Cases in which at least one parent has to quit their job entirely with no other financial support.

2x

The amount of school that siblings of cancer patients miss compared to their healthy peers.

68%

Caregivers who express significant concern over medical bills. 15% of those who sit in middle-class families are pushed into poverty during treatment.

When a child is diagnosed, the crisis doesn't stay in the hospital. It follows the family home. The financial spiral starts immediately — missed income, medical bills, travel costs, and expenses that compound every week. Marriages buckle under pressure they were never designed for. Siblings learn that their needs come second, and some never unlearn it. Mental health emergencies don't announce themselves until months or years later, and by then the support window has closed.

Reframing the Cancer Process

The initiating crisis event or ongoing condition (diagnosis, loss). Often sudden, chaotic, and disorienting. Triggers nervous system overload (fight, flight, freeze, fawn).
A person enters a new, often overwhelming system: hospital, courtroom, care team, etc. Expectations are unclear or constantly shifting. Identity dissonance begins.
Long haul of treatment, grieving, and adjusting. Coping strategies emerge: some adaptive and some harmful Information seeking, identity adaptation, burnout or breakdown.
The trauma survivor begins to make meaning or reclaim agency. Engages with support groups, redefines roles, or advocates for others. Could also withdraw, resist, or redirect energy into survival.
Not always a clean “exit” but a shift: out of active, away from crisis mode. Can involve grief for the life “before.” Often re-entry into “normal” systems that feel ill-suited for changed identity.
Traumatic memories and reactions echo over time. Anniversaries, new losses, systemic failures can re-activate distress. Also includes integration: new values, support roles, activism.

1: Types of trauma.
2: Triggers.
3: Immediate reactions.
4: Systemic access disparities.
1: Healthcare systems.
2: Family roles.
3: Financial impact.
4: Emotional overload.
5: Cultural narratives.
1: Coping mechanisms.
2: Family adaptations.
3: Service deserts.
4: Mental health fluctuations.
1: Post-traumatic growth.
2: Narrative shifts.
3: Decision-making.
4: Stigma and advocacy.
1: System gaps post-crisis.
2: Return to work/school.
3: Relationships.
4: Chronic impacts.
1: Long-term health.
2: Resilience.
3: Re-triggering memories.
4: Generational trauma.

What’s Next

The entire cancer support ecosystem is organized around the patient and the diagnosis. The family is treated as context, not as a population in crisis. There are thousands of medical resources, clinical studies, and treatment protocols for the child. There is almost nothing designed to help a marriage survive treatment, or to help siblings maintain their identity, or to help a single parent build a mental health plan that accounts for the specific shape of their life. This isn't a gap in information. It's a gap in orientation. The system assumes that if the patient is treated, the family will figure it out. They don't.

Main Insight

We built The Cancer Iceberg, a podcast that functions as a research vehicle. Every episode brings in a professional — family therapists, financial counselors, social workers, researchers — to work through a specific problem that cancer families face and that nobody is addressing head-on. How do you keep a marriage functioning when one of you lives at the hospital and the other holds down everything else? How do siblings maintain their own identity when their family's personal life is public? How do you think about an auto loan when you're staring at $20,000 in medical bills? Each conversation is built on months of interviews and research, and each one produces resources that go into a growing toolbox families can actually use. The podcast is the engine. The toolbox is the output. The goal is to build the coordinated, family-centered resource system that doesn't exist yet.

Future