Kristen Dahlgren, Founder of the Cancer Vaccine Coalition:
“I think I’m the glue…I’m the mouthpiece for this. I recognize that there is incredible science going on, and it’s not getting out to people. I didn’t even know that there were breast cancer vaccines in development, and I was a breast cancer survivor and a medical reporter for NBC!…If I didn’t know about it, I knew that the word wasn’t getting out to a lot of other people!”
On this impactful episode of The Women’s Eye podcast, I talk with former NBC News correspondent Kristen Dahlgren about her personal cancer journey, leaving NBC News after three decades and helping form the Cancer Vaccine Coalition. Her primary focus is now to accelerate breast cancer vaccines that will erase this fatal disease for good!
Available also on Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube
For three decades, Dahlgren had her ultimate dream job: reporting the news for NBC. As a correspondent for NBC News, she covered many cancer-related stories, including one with the Mayo Clinic about a new study that said around 1 in 6 women with breast cancer don’t present with a lump.
“When on my 47th birthday, I was getting dressed and…putting my shirt on, and I was like, ‘Oh, there’s a dent. What is that about?’ Because I had done that story, I thought back, and I thought that’s something that I need to get checked out because that’s not how this normally looks. So the message I got there is know your body…That’s when my first advocacy started. Once I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I thought, ‘Well, gosh, that story I did saved my life.’”
Dahlgren says she has no regrets leaving NBC earlier this year. Now she wants to get the word out to help raise the funding that the world’s top researchers need, and ultimately save hundreds of thousands of lives across the globe.
“I think there’s a better way that we can train our immune systems to fight the cancer, and so this science is really close,” Dahlgren says.
“I asked one woman high up in the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) who has been working on this problem for decades, ‘Are we on the right track? Am I doing the right thing?’ And she said, ‘Kristen, I have never in all my years of working in this field been more hopeful than I am right now.’ To hear that still gives me chills.”
Now this survivor and thriver is more motivated than ever to continue the fight for a cure, and for her 8-year-old daughter.
“It really is about making sure that she has better options than I did, because she was three when I was diagnosed, and this changed all of our lives,” Dahlgren says.
“I’m doing well, I’m healthy and I’m in remission, but I think about recurrence all the time. I look at her, and I don’t want her to have to go through this or to feel like she has a ticking time bomb inside of her.”
Dahlgren says if there is one thing she’s learned from being a journalist it’s that one person can change the world. Well, she is doing just that. Be sure to watch and listen to this courageous woman to learn how.
Thank you, Kristen! Congratulations on your new chapter!
Photos: Courtesy Kristen Dahlgren
To learn more about Kristen Dahlgren and the Cancer Vaccine Coalition:
Website: cancervaccinecoalition.org
Facebook: @cancervaccinecoalition
Instagram: kristendahlgrennbc
X/Twitter: kristendahlgren
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