A Letter To Rally Kid Alexa
Dear sweet Alexa,
Yesterday’s passage of the funding bill in the Senate (yes, it’s now 2026!) was a win inspired by you so many years ago.
I first learned what advocacy really looks like because of you. You were only a preschooler, and yet you understood exactly what mattered. You marched up to Capitol Hill, climbed into Senator Johnny Isakson’s lap, and, very matter-of-factly, asked him for $1 million for childhood cancer research and to come to an ice cream party with you that afternoon. He did both and more.
Yesterday, the U.S. Senate voted on a funding bill that included two critical childhood cancer bills. One reinstates the Creating Hope Act, originally championed by Senator Isakson, through the Mikaela Naylon Give Kids a Chance Act. The bill also includes the Accelerating Kids’ Access to Care Act, allowing children on Medicaid to cross state lines to access the best treatment available to them.
It also increases funding for the Department of Defense Medical Research Program’s Peer-Reviewed Cancer Research Program and provides continued support for the STAR Act and the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative.
This is how progress happens. One voice, one child, one brave ask at a time.
I miss you every single day. This picture sits on my desk, inspiring me to keep going. The work you began continues and yesterday, it moved forward.
On Monday, it goes back to the House for final passage, and then to the President’s desk for his signature. We are so close.
I hope next week you and Senator Isakson will be celebrating with an ice cream party in heaven.
Together we will Rally On, my sweet girl. I love you!
Dean
P.S. Alexa, thank you for teaching me how to advocate boldly, fearlessly, and with joy. Because of that lesson, Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research has gone on to serve as the lead advocate for the Department of Defense Peer-Reviewed Medical Research Program, helping secure more than $317 million for cancers affecting children, adolescents, and young adults. And you should be here. You would be a young adult now. I can only imagine the incredible things you would be doing.