Childhood Cancer Talk Radio | Live Internet Talk Radio

Steven Healey shares the inspiration behind the foundation, his beautiful, forever-5 year old daughter Brooke who's life lasted just eight months post diagnosis of DIPG, a deadly pediatric brain cancer. Healey describes the harrowing experience as a parent, but also about a new-found community of families dedicated to funding research for the devastating disease, the DIPG Collaborative. The importance of awareness to an industry which categorically ignores the most vulnerable and those most needy of a cure, placing the burden of funding on to bereaved families, is an actual experience for parents familiar with DIPG and most pediatric cancers.

Blessed with varied interests and an artistic and musical upbringing, Janet had health challenges throughout her young adult life. Despite these she graduated Cum Laude from Wellesley College with an award of distinction for acting, and had also been a champion equestrian. She began a family with her husband Barry later in life, and had finally found happiness with daughter Sophie-Marie (3/12/06) and then baby (Jack 8/30/08). Five weeks after his birth, the family escaped a wildfire in which all worldly possessions were lost. The family relocated in December of 2008 to Agua Dulce CA where they currently reside.

Jack began to have unsettling symptoms at the age of 3; he was taken to Children's Hospital Los Angeles and was diagnosed with DIPG, or diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, on Friday Oct. 28, 2011, indisputably the darkest experience of Janet's life. The outrage of it made her determined to find the good in the situation, and she asked God to "Put me to work!" After Jack's death, she remained determined to start working to find solutions to DIPG and incorporated Jack's Angels at the end of 2012; the Foundation began its work in 2013. Despite the fact that DIPG is responsible for the majority of brain tumor deaths in children, she had been told there were no solutions for Jack because "the numbers aren't great enough for investors." This remains the primary motivation in her advocacy work, to prioritize children's lives in our medical system in the United States.