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Melissa's Living Legacy Teen Cancer Foundation is a small non-profit with an increasingly national stature, one that has it entering a partnership with a major cancer network in Buffalo and discussions to spread its programs to major hospitals across the country.
The organization, which works to fill the unmet needs of teenagers being treated for cancer, developed a website and program, Teens Living with Cancer, that is being replicated at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo.
"We've been working hard to build a model that is now very replicable," said Lauren Spiker, founder and president of Melissa's Living Legacy. "We've had success with the TLC program here in Rochester and we had been putting things in place to move it to Buffalo, and now that's paying off."
Roswell Park officials said they are excited to bring the proven program to teens and families in Buffalo, and they noted that treatment for this segment of the population has traditionally been difficult.
"There's a proven need for these kinds of resources that support the teenagers, who sometimes get lost between pediatrics and young adult treatments," said Cindy Eller, vice president of development and executive director of the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. "They have their own challenges of being in high school and facing cancer, and we want to help them with the personal challenges that come with a cancer diagnosis."
Roswell Park hopes to have the program up and running by early 2013, Eller said.
The non-profit is looking for further expansion as well, Spiker said. She is working on expanding a complementary program aimed at promoting...