How Kindful Helps Beat Nb Make the Most of Their Donor Relationships
Beat Nb is a parent-founded, parent-led organization focused on beating neuroblastoma and other childhood cancers.
To understand what Beat Nb is fighting for, it’s first important to understand what they’re fighting against. Neuroblastoma is the most common cancer in infants; nearly half of the children diagnosed are under two years old. It is an aggressive illness, and even with chemotherapy, the survival rate is less than 60%. More than half of children diagnosed with neuroblastoma will relapse. At that point, there is no curative treatment. The survival rate then falls into the single digits.
It seems impossible to comprehend, but it’s something that the parents of roughly 700 children in the United States have to grapple with each year. Kyle and Robyn Matthews were two of those parents. Their son, Ezra, was diagnosed with neuroblastoma when he was 13 months old. Unfortunately, Ezra’s story ended as too many others do; he died the following year.
From that day forward, there was one question on their minds: How can we stop this from happening to other families? The answer was funding clinical research trials. The more we learn about neuroblastoma, the better chance we have of effectively fighting it.
And they are fighting it. Today, Kyle serves as Beat Nb’s Executive Director. The organization is making incredible strides in this fight as Beat Nb funds research at a consortium of 47 hospitals across North America. They’re now seeing 90% survival rates in the children in some of the research trials they’ve funded, as well as 30-40% survival rates in children who’ve relapsed.
