Livestrong Young Adult Alliance

New Friends-Same Passion

What a great meeting. A group over 100 assembled at the Annual Young Adult Alliance on November 12th -14th to share collective experience to advance Young Adult oncology. The conference started a day early for me as I had an opportunity to meet with some folks from the LAF and share some best practices and brainstorm about the year to come. I also had the chance to catch up with a friend who now works for the LAF. Small world! We had a great time and were also able to share ideas and inspirational stories.

Topics included Resource Sharing, Young Adult Clinical Trials, Follow up Care, New Forms of Media, Standards of Care and Awareness.

Partnerships and Collaboration were some of the key themes that were my take-aways from the meeting. Some great relationships were formed and wonderful and powerful ideas and plans for 2009. There is much momentum in the cancer community and it is our charge to act united and efficiently as we all focus on our fulfilling our Missions in the year to come. New task forces were formed and strong initiatives were structured. Our challenge now is to make sure that we keep our focus and act collectively unified so that we will have great success stories to share at next year’s meeting. These are truly special people. All having made a commitment to supporting the cancer movement. Everyone has committed in different ways, but share the same passion and determination in their organizations mission. I have never met more passionate people than I did at this meeting. It is cliché, but it was truly inspirational.

We had a great key note address from Doug Ulman, President of the Armstrong Foundation as well as a being able to welcome Eric Shanteau, a member of the US Olympic swim team and cancer survivor, to the LYAA team. Eric shared his story with all of us and he was able to mesmerize the crowd of his story and his courageous and patriotic decisions. WOW!

A great group and a powerful ALLIANCE!

LIVESTRONG

Brian
UCF Staff