The Collings Stevens Family Foundation partners with LLSC to help Canadians impacted by CML
Every year, approximately 700 Canadians are diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), a type of blood cancer that starts in the bone marrow. While there is no cure, people with CML today have a similar life expectancy to those who don’t have the disease because of recent advances in treatment and management.
A Canadian man living with CML and his family are passionately focused on raising awareness of and improving the quality of life for people living with CML and their families.
Allan Collings, of British Columbia, was diagnosed with CML in 2017. He and his wife, Hilary Stevens (shown here) founded The Collings Stevens Family Foundation to support various causes, including The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada (LLSC) starting in 2018.
“When I was first advised that I had CML, I immediately began to search the internet for information and found that a daunting task. The most pragmatic information that I could find at that time was on the LLSC website,” says Allan Collings.
“With that in mind, we chose to provide additional financial resources to the LLSC so they could further enhance and improve that information for the benefit of all those people who are diagnosed and living with CML. The LLSC has done an excellent job of expanding and updating this information!”
CML is most common in older adults, and slightly more common in men than women. Developing slowly and without symptoms at first, CML is often picked up in a routine blood test.
The Collings Stevens Family Foundation supports educational pages and resources (online fact sheets, printed booklets) about CML on the LLSC’s websites, bloodcancers.ca and cancersdusang.ca.
“Medically vetted yet easy-to-understand information is critical for people diagnosed with a blood cancer to help them participate in decisions about treatment and care of their disease,” says Nadine Prevost, Director of Community Services and Research, LLSC.
“Thanks to partners such as The Collings Stevens Family Foundation, this gap is being filled,” she says. “LLSC offers multimedia resources about all types of blood cancer written with the average Canadian in mind.”
