ACCESS – Annual General Meeting
Toronto, 2023
Conference report
Author: Jacob Randell
On December 4th 2023, I was given the amazing opportunity and privilege to attend the ACCESS conference in Toronto as a youth researcher alongside my team and to meet many other researchers with the same goal, to further research better cancer treatments and an overall better experience for children with cancer.
I had been sick most of my life and always had my family by my side, so going to the big city of Toronto by myself was a huge accomplishment for me. This is an independence I had never experienced but really needed to do.
As a young cancer patient, I was very active in public speaking and sharing my story to bring awareness to childhood cancer. I was also an ambassador for the Children Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO). It had been a while since I had participated in any event relating to my journey and it felt amazing to be a part of something great again. Being active in this type of research is important to me because i’ve been a part of the cancer world for 15 years now and during those years i’ve been trying to help further cancer research so that one day we will be able to properly address the problems that children are diagnosed with.
This conference made me feel like part of a team.
It was all new to me. Being a part of a team like this that wants to see a change as much as they do, when it comes to cancer research really gave me hope.
By attending this conference I had an opportunity to learn about the different views and goals of all the participants, what surprised me the most of all is how well everyone was working with each other and how dedicated to this one cause and how they all believe that it is possible. I didn’t really know what I was expecting but it definitely wasn’t anywhere close to what I experienced.
Overall, our goals were the exact same in terms of outcome, the shared outcome I noticed is that we all want to expand the research and knowledge of pediatric cancer. Each research team had a different process to achieve their goal. The teams presented a slide on their goals and what they were hoping to achieve.
The opportunity to meet all the researchers was an amazing experience. There wasn’t a particular presentation that stood out to me but all of them made me realize how involved and dedicated they all are to this cause.
In the afternoon/evening each group presented their e-posters to teach other researchers what they are trying to accomplish. After the e-poster presentations, there was an opportunity to ask questions to further understand what the poster was explaining.
On the second day, it started with a conversation with youths and researchers where I had the opportunity to share a bit of my story. The goal of this panel was to help understand the importance of why we need to learn both sides of youths with cancer and researchers when talking about cancer, because neither side has the same view or experience.
It is important because the researchers aren’t the ones who have experienced the pain and struggles there are when it comes to living with cancer.
On the final day, I had the opportunity to visit a cancer research lab, it was an amazing learning opportunity. I got to see how they test different treatments on tumors and learned about how they decide if the treatment is right for the patient.
The Consortium will research all phases of childhood cancer – from prevention to diagnosis to treatment to survivorship. It will address knowledge gaps in pediatric cancer research. Objectives include:
- Establish a foundation for coordinated research in pediatric cancer and knowledge mobilization in Canada;
- Improve the research pipeline for the development and further access to drugs for children affected by cancer;
- Develop new therapies for childhood cancer;
- Train and mentor the next generation of pediatric cancer researchers.
In conclusion, the overall experience of the conference was something I could have never imagined having the privilege to attend. It was such a wonderful opportunity to meet so many people trying their hardest to achieve a very important goal. This experience showed me that there is a larger group than I thought who are dedicated to advancing cancer research to ensure better treatments and medications for children with cancer. As a survivor of two types of cancer, from what I saw and experienced during the conference I believe there is a bright future for ACCESS and I hope to have more opportunities to work alongside them.