Our Founder
Susan L. Weiner, PhD
Susan founded Children’s Cancer Cause in 1999 (originally The Children’s Cause, Inc.) to highlight the need for new therapy and quality care for childhood cancer patients, survivors, and their families and empower them to become leaders sin pediatric cancer advocacy.
"The complex challenges of developing new therapies for children with cancer, and emerging knowledge about the harmful effects of current therapies were the founding ideas behind Children’s Cancer Cause. In 1999, families’ and survivors’ urgency and perspectives on the need for new treatments and the struggles of survivors seemed to be absent in national cancer policy debates.
Like many of you, this mission was derived from personal experience. My son Adam spent his 13 years of life struggling with a brain tumor, its treatment and aftermath. For me, the joy of his childhood was entangled with anguish about the inadequacy of treatments to make him well and the dire absence of interventions to help him develop normally.
We’ve come so far. We’ve labored nationally to give childhood cancer friends, families and survivors the knowledge and skills to become informed responsible advocates. We’ve helped create a vibrant, collaborative, action-ready national community. We’ve been a catalyst for national recognition of childhood cancer concerns as founding members of the Alliance for Childhood Cancer and the Coalition Against Cancer Advocacy.
Working with partners on Capitol Hill, in federal agencies and in other childhood cancer organizations, we’ve achieved legislative victories in pediatric drug development, survivorship support, and meaningful health care reform for survivors.
But we have much more work to do.
Dr. Weiner, whose son Adam was a 13-year cancer survivor, has been key to bringing childhood cancer research and survivorship care to the forefront of the national cancer policy agenda. She has served on multiple committees of the National Cancer Institute, the Food and Drug Administration, the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Weiner is also the founder of the Mary McDowell Friends School, a nearly 40 year-old K-12 independent school for children with learning disabilities in New York City,
Dr. Weiner was the first patient advocate to receive ASCO's 2017 Partners in Progress Award and was the first U.S. advocate on ACCELERATE’s Steering Committee, an international platform on the development of new pediatric cancer therapies. She was the Children's Brain Tumor Foundation’s first executive director. and oversaw its research grant awards, initiated the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium Foundation, and started other nonprofit programs serving patients and families.