Why DIPG? The One to Beat from Awareness to Research

DIPG is front and center with researchers, devastated by the picture painted by the statistics of this killer of very young children, and with advocates who have been working for years to get a greater national conversation about the chronic lack of research funding for the deadliest pediatric cancers.

DIPG reveals itself to be as mysterious and ephemeral in it's signature as the variances of individual fingerprints...and represents the frontier of our understanding of cancer, and the brain.  It's also a ruthless killer of our children, and as the 2nd most common pediatric brain tumor, the only thing rare about it is the long-term survivor.

In H.Res.69, DIPG acts as an ambassador for childhood cancer and the experiences that childhood cancer families endure when "the numbers aren't great enough for investors."  It makes a strong case for urgency of need, and years of life lost, being a greater factors for research grant consideration.

 

 

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About Janet


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.