Hope in Every Step: Raising Awareness for Childhood Cancer

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Cancer is one of the leading causes of disease-related deaths in children. Thanks to advances in treatment, early detection and specialized pediatric oncology, survival rates for many childhood cancers have improved. 

This is part one of a two-episode series on childhood cancer. Mohamad Al-Rahawan, M.D., pediatric oncologist with Texas Tech Physicians, answers our questions about childhood cancer and explains why and how it's different from cancer in adults. Dr. Al-Rahawan also encourages our listeners to support the upcoming Lubbock Pediatric Cancer Walk on Saturday, Sept. 20, 2025.

In the next episode, you’ll hear again from Dr. Al-Rahawan and how a family dealt not only with a cancer diagnosis for their daughter, but how they managed having to travel for treatments and emergencies and being away from the rest of their family.

Transcript

Melissa Whitfield  00:10
Hello and welcome back to Texas Tech Health Check from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. I'm your host, Melissa Whitfield. We want you to get healthy and stay healthy, with help from evidence based advice from our physicians, health care providers and researchers. Cancer is one of the leading causes of disease related deaths in children, but thanks to advances in treatment, early detection and specialized pediatric oncology care, survival rates for many childhood cancers have improved. September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and this is part one of a two part special on childhood cancer. Our guest is Dr Mohamad Al-Rahawan, pediatric oncologist with Texas Tech Physicians. Dr Al-Rahawan answers our questions about childhood cancer and explains why and how it's different from cancer in adults. In the next episode, you'll hear again from Dr. Al-Rahawan and how a family dealt not only with a cancer diagnosis for their toddler, but also having to travel for treatments and emergencies and being apart from the rest of their family.

Melissa Whitfield  01:28
Dr Al-Rahawan, welcome to our podcast.

Mohamad Al-Rahawan, M.D.  01:30
Thank you very much for the opportunity, and it's good to see you again.

Melissa Whitfield  01:33
Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your expertise and what you do here at the Health Sciences Center?

Mohamad Al-Rahawan, M.D.  01:39
My name is Mohammed Al-Rahawan. I have been at Texas Tech for about 10 years, and I am a pediatric Hematologist Oncologist by training. And you know, I decided to be that in medical school. I remember realizing the impact that such a profession would have on the kid, the family and the society, and deciding early on in my medical school years that this is the kind of work that I want to do. So that was long time ago. Now, now fast forward. It's been a great opportunity to work with all those kids and families. So my specialty in pediatric blood and cancer disorders allows me to, you know, deal with a spectrum of disorders, and I've done this for a couple of decades already. Now, recently, I joined the bigger picture of comprehensive cancer care across the region, and that gives a slightly different flavor to what I do at Texas Tech Health Science Center.

Melissa Whitfield  02:36
Well, again, welcome to our podcast, and thank you so much for taking time to talk to us about childhood cancer. So if you could tell us what is considered childhood cancer, and are children never too young to be diagnosed with cancer,

Mohamad Al-Rahawan, M.D.  02:50
Sure, I'm going to start the other way around. So cancer is, you know, a growth of cells that is out of control. You know, it emerges out of a glitch in the cell replication process and ends up with a endless growth of a certain cell resulting in impact on organs in the body. Childhood cancer is a cancer that affects children. Now, frankly, it is different from the cancers that we see in adults, but it's still cancer overgrowth of cells. Cancer is a disease that affects elderly more than younger population, yet it does not distinguish between between ages. Despite the fact that pediatric cancer is a smaller problem compared to adult cancer in terms of sheer numbers, it is still a problem for pediatrics. In fact, some kids are born with cancer.

Melissa Whitfield  03:46
What are some of the types of cancer in children?

Mohamad Al-Rahawan, M.D.  03:50
About two thirds of kids cancers are either brain or blood cancers. The most common pediatric cancer is acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a disease that we see a lot, we studied a lot, and we have excellent outcome with.

Melissa Whitfield  04:07
Some of us might know people with cancer and who have gone through treatments. Are treatments, the same for children as for adults, because it seems pretty harsh.

Mohamad Al-Rahawan, M.D.   04:16
Yeah. So until about a decade and a half, two decades ago, we relied heavily on the standard methods of treating cancer that are used in both adults and pediatrics. So you know, the between surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, those are the available options that we have relied heavily on. In the past couple of decades, we started introducing newer therapies, and those include immunotherapies and targeted therapy, which means that we actually find a weakness point on the cancer cell and go after it with a drug. This has allowed us to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy. But in general, the answer to your question is yes, it's not too different from adult cancer treatments.

Melissa Whitfield  04:59
So. What are some of the challenges in treating childhood cancer?

Mohamad Al-Rahawan, M.D.  05:04
You know, there are a couple that jump to mind. I want to start by the fact that children are not merely young, smaller adults. They're they're basically children. And that's that's to be considered. That comes with a couple of details. One is that the kid is not always able to understand what it is that they're facing and what we need them to do. So oftentimes, we are obtaining consent to treat them by proxy, by asking the father or mother or guardian to allow us to do the treatment. So that that makes it a little tricky because you want to make sure that the kid is included in the decision making to a level that's appropriate to them. We have the tools that allow us to do that, and we rely heavily on Child Life and psychology to assess and assure that we are including the children in deciding what happens to them. So that's that's a bit of a challenge. You know, you get, you get trained to work in that environment, so you get better at it. And I think it is certainly a challenge if you are not attuned to looking at the child as not only a small individual, but also an entity of itself with special characteristics to it. So that's one challenge. Another challenge in taking care of pediatric cancer is that, thankfully, it is a rare disorder. It's not as abundant and common as adult cancer. And for drug development, and like therapy development, most of the research and funding goes to developing and treating adult cancers, and that leaves pediatric cancer unsupported. Not too many drug companies are going to try to find a medication that would work in a small group of patients. So oftentimes we have to have the governments step in and fund pediatric cancer drug development. Governments have many priorities on their hands, and sometimes, you know, childhood cancer does not surface to the top. From my perspective, it should be, but I think there are multiple variables that affect decision making and makes it harder to secure drug development for childhood cancer. So that's the second challenge. The third challenge is that pediatric subspecialties in general, including pediatric oncology, are underfunded. Children do not have lobbyists on the Capitol. They don't send people to advocate on their behalf, and the parents are busy advocating for so many things that sometimes they don't advocate for their own children on the Capitol Hill, you know, on the government side. So reimbursement for pediatric services is so low that it's hard to maintain physician support. And people are not entering the pediatric subspecialty world or exiting the pediatric subspecialty world. So the number of physicians working in pediatric subspecialty, including pediatric cancer, is decreasing, and it's it's heading towards a national crisis. And this is a challenge, a big challenge. If it's not addressed, we will have shortage of treating physicians.

Melissa Whitfield  08:20
Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Mohamad Al-Rahawan, M.D.  08:24
You know, there's a need in West Texas to screen for cancer, diagnose it early, and treat it earlier. If we are able to do this effectively, we will have better outcomes. The distance, the sparsity of population, the lack of local resources, is a call for us to act together. Cancer is not a disease that affects individuals, it affects families and communities. So there is an invite that I would want to extend to anyone listening to this: To think about cancer, because it can hit close to home. Think about cancer as my problem, everybody's problem. We have to do this together. I would also like to put a word in that coping with cancer is not an easy thing to do, and it takes a village literally. So we have support care teams that are multidisciplinary: There's nursing, there's Child Life Specialist, psychologists, physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and a army of health care providers that take care of those children. And we, we celebrate together, we grieve together. And one of the events that allow us to do this is a event that we do in September, which is the Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. We have this event that's called Lubbock Pediatric Cancer Walk. It is done by the Lubbock Pediatric Cancer Association, and it happens at a public park where kids affected by cancer, their families, their loved ones, and the supporting community comes out and, you know, celebrates a day. We do it in the morning. You know, we try to do it early enough in the day that people can enjoy as much of the day as they want. It's not only a walk, it's it's usually an event that includes fun games. The police and the fire squad comes out and the kids play and, you know, get introduced to what what they can offer. We have foam party. We have pony rides, and we have a walk. One of the things that we do during that annual event is a grieving opportunity, where if someone lost a child to cancer, they have an opportunity to potentially have a closure. We used to have balloon release for each child that passed away, but now we release butterflies, and it's such a beautiful event. And I think if you have any interest, please look it up. It's on social media: Lubbock Pediatric Cancer Walk. And it is this year. It's going to happen on the 20th. It's a Saturday, and you know, we have a lot of people that come out and enjoy the day with us. So I invite everybody.

Melissa Whitfield  11:23
Well, thank you so much for coming on our podcast and talking to us about childhood cancer and sharing Emmy's story and also about this event that's coming up. Thank you so much for coming on.

Mohamad Al-Rahawan, M.D.  11:33
Absolutely. Thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Melissa Whitfield  11:37
Thank you for listening to Texas Tech Health Check. Make sure to subscribe or follow wherever you listen to podcasts. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek immediate medical advice from your physician or your health care provider for questions regarding your health or medical condition. Texas Tech Health Check is brought to you by Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and produced by T.R. Castillo, Suzanna Cisneros, Mark Hendricks, Kay Williams and me, Melissa Whitfield.