Pioneering Treatments & Research
for Children Worldwide

Today, one in 550 young adults in the United States is a childhood cancer survivor. Only three decades ago, 80 percent of children diagnosed with cancer died. Now, more than 80 percent survive — thanks in part to advances made at the Childrens Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

While we don’t yet have cures for inherited “benign” blood diseases,
we have made significant strides in reducing their consequences and increasing the quality and duration of these children’s lives.

For more than five decades, the Center has been changing the face of cancer and blood diseases through our innovative clinical and research programs, academic excellence and global leadership. We are the nation’s largest pediatric hematology/oncology program and one of
the two largest pediatric cancer centers.

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Jeanine Oropeza, PhD in psychology

Jeanine Oropeza calls upon a lifetime of confronting cancer and other issues to help young people. She was nine months old when a non-cancerous tumor developed near her collarbone. Doctors at Childrens Hospital removed it — twice — followed by chemotherapy and radiation. In 1994, when she was 22, the tumor returned. This time it was cancer —osteosarcoma. After chemotherapy failed to kill the tumor, doctors recommended amputationof her left arm, shoulder and breast.

In Jeanine’s many hospital stays, other patients were naturally drawn to her. Dr. Stuart Siegel suggested she’d be a good psychologist. Jeanine now works with at-risk teens and
kids with medical challenges, having earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology at UC Irvine and her PhD from the California School of Professional Psychology.

“They see in me someone who hasn’t given up,” she says.
“I tell them if you have a dream and you love life, you don’t stop going, no matter what.”