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ADVOCACY
Send a Message to Congress You can sign this petition to get standard rights for Teens and young adults when they go through treatment that they current do not officially have. This will also bring about the voice they need to get more clinical trails and more! Check out SeventyK.org! Learn More about SeventyK...
Why SeventyK? - The right to be taken seriously when seeking medical attention to avoid late diagnosis or misdiagnosis, and entitlement to separate and confidential discussions regarding our own care. - The right to affordable health insurance, as well as early detection tests unhindered by insurance or socioeconomic status. - The right to be offered fertility preservation as well as current information and research regarding ongoing and potentially lifelong effects of cancer treatment that would affect our fertility.
- The right to be informed about available clinical trials and given reasonable access to them.
- The right to untethered access to adolescent and young adult cancer specialists and, when requested, a second opinion regardless of insurance or geographic location.
- The right to access a social worker or caseworker who is well-versed in adolescent and young adult cancer specifics.
- The right to “generationally applicable” psychosocial support.
- The right to have our insurance and position as a student or employee protected by law while dealing with our cancer in order to minimize discrimination.
- The right to clear explanations regarding the long-term side effects of our disease and its treatment, and to be offered all available and applicable physical reconstruction and rehabilitation options.
- The right to have all of our treatment options explained to us in full detail, to have our questions answered, and to receive clarification when requested so that we can be an active part of our own care. Why SeventyK.? More facts... There are over 70,000 people aged 15-39 diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. per year. For over two decades there has been little or no improvement in survival in this specific age group. “Nearly 68,000 people aged 15 to 39 years were diagnosed with cancer in 2002, approximately 8 times more than children under age 15.”1 “…Little or no progress has been seen in the AYA population…among those aged 25 to 35 years, survival has not improved in more than two decades…15-39 year-olds diagnosed with cancer in 1975-1980 had dramatically better survival than most other age groups; however, survival rates for this population have stagnated while survival improvements achieved in younger and older age groups have now-or will soon-eclipse AYAs’ previously superior survival rates. The right to be taken seriously when seeking medical attention to avoid late diagnosis or misdiagnosis, and entitlement to separate and confidential discussions regarding our own care. Adolescents and young adults may have a higher risk for delay in diagnosis or misdiagnosis, which can affect survival outcomes. Because of psychological and social factors in adolescents and young adults, patients in this age range may be at a higher risk for delay in diagnosis, which in turn may impact cancer survival. Among the variety of explanations for young adults delaying to seek medical care and obtain a correct diagnosis are their sense of invincibility, lack of routine medical care, physicians poorly trained or unwilling to care for adolescents, under-recognition by medical professionals of cancer or its symptoms and signs in the age group, and lack of health insurance. AYA cancer survivors who describe misdiagnosis of their cancer symptoms and the months-in some cases years-that elapsed before a correct diagnosis of cancer was made…Both provider and patient factors may contribute to late diagnosis. Health care provider’s level of suspicion of cancer as a cause of symptoms in this population generally is low, contributing to delayed diagnosis of primary cancers, second cancers, and late effects due to cancer treatment. American and Canadian studies of pediatric and adolescent cancer patients have shown that the number of days from symptom onset to diagnosis increases with patient age, as much as double the number of days for older adolescents compared with patients 14 and under. Check out SeventyK.org!
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