About

Our Mission

We are hoping to make a change and have created this “Brooke Strong” fund in an effort to raise money and awareness for metastatic breast cancer, but more specifically, this disease at the Stage IV level. Brooke does not want to become one of the 40,000 that die each year. 

Background

Each year, 200,000 Americans are diagnosed with breast cancer. Each year 40,000 people die from breast cancer.

In 2017, at the age of 36 Brooke became one of those 200,000. She became part of a club she did not want to be in. She was diagnosed with breast cancer. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer, also known as metastatic breast cancer.

Metastatic breast cancer is the most advanced stage of breast cancer. This is when, the cancer has spread beyond the breast to other organs in the body (most often the bones, lungs, liver or brain). Metastatic breast cancer is the most serious and life-threatening stage of breast cancer and at this time it is not considered survivable. It is estimated, that 155,000-plus women (and men) in the U.S. currently live with metastatic breast cancer. Each day 113 individuals die from metastatic breast cancer. Science has very few answers to the reason why cancer metastasizes and we don’t yet have an effective treatment to stop the growth.

The biggest challenge is lack of funding. Only 2%-5% of the funds raised for breast cancer research are dedicated to Stage IV breast cancer research. According to Susan G. Komen, $956 million has been raised for breast cancer research. However, stage IV has only received $166 million of that amount. People don’t die from early stage breast cancer. People die from stage IV.  We need to learn more about stage IV and we need more funding for stage IV research.