Most 21 year-old college seniors worry about what to wear for a first job interview, not whether the next cancer therapy session will end his or her battle with the disease. Just six months before college graduation, Matthew Zachary was worrying about just that.

Today, 13 years later, Zachary is still fighting the effects of cancer. While the cancer may be gone, he still does not feel cured.

“I still struggle with the consequences of being cured and live with significant psychological, neurological, physical, and physiological deficits,” he said.

In 2007, Zachary decided to take his fight against cancer even further; he launched 

www.imtooyoungforthis.com, a website geared towards cancer patients and survivors who are under the age of 40, and became the national spokesperson for the "cancer under 40" social movement.

“I launched i[2]y in response to a public health report entitled "Closing the Gap" which, more or less, mentioned that despite all of our progress in cancer research, prevention, early detection, etc., the survival rates for Americans diagnosed between ages fifteen and thirty-nine have not improved.”

“We have an obligation to find a cure for this population which has been ignored by the system since Nixon declared war on cancer,” he said. “We can save lives, build communities, end isolation, and provide meaningful survivorship.”

Through word of mouth and occasionally the mainstream media, the website, i[2]y, generates about 75,000 hits a month, and is quickly becoming a household name. It is supported by Generation X, Generation Y and the parents of these generations; I[2]y  was even featured as one of TIME magazine’s "50 Best Websites of 2007." Zachary does not expect the movement to stop there, though.

“Our goal,” he said, “is to improve the five year remission rate by 20% over the next ten years through improved medical education to minimize delayed diagnosis and drive access to clinical trials, consumer healthcare communications to continue to raise awareness for this disparity, and social media to end isolation, foster community both online and offline and improve quality of life.”

With the help of friends, family, and the media, the odds that continued support and recognition of Matthew Zachary and the “cancer under 40” movement will grow are in favor of Zachary and the movement.  

Please visit www.imtooyoungforthis.com to learn more about this organization.