Hundreds of people carried lanterns through Piedmont Park this weekend for Light The Night, Blood Cancer United's annual fundraiser supporting blood cancer research, advocacy, and patient support. Walkers moved through the park's Meadow area holding white, gold, and red lanterns, each color marking a different relationship to the disease that touches an estimated 1.7 million Americans living with more than 100 types of blood cancer.
A Walk Marked by Color and Meaning
White lanterns honored survivors, gold lanterns remembered those who died from blood cancer, and red lanterns represented support for the search for a cure, according to Atlanta News First. The event included designated program elements such as the Circle of Survivors, where patients gather holding white lanterns, and a Remembrance Pavilion where families could leave messages and photos of lost loved ones, per Northside Hospital.
Valerie Taylor, a Blood Cancer United volunteer and cancer survivor herself, said the gathering gives patients, survivors, and families a chance to see they are not alone. That sense of shared experience ran through much of the evening, as strangers walked side by side carrying lanterns that told very different stories.
A Teenage Honored Hero's Fight
This year's Atlanta Honored Hero was 14-year-old Jalen Alexander, who was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2024 after doctors found a mass on his neck while he was in sixth grade. Alexander described his cancer as what he called a grown man's or grown woman's cancer because of how aggressive it was, the station's report notes.
Not every story shared at the park ended in survival. Kaya Edwards attended the walk to remember her daughter Zoya, who died from a rare form of leukemia. Zoya's sixth birthday would have fallen on Saturday, and Edwards said her daughter's leukemia had shown no symptoms before the diagnosis.
Survivors Urged to Speak Up
Elaine Dixon, another cancer survivor at the event, said survivors must tell their stories to help someone else. That message of visibility echoes a broader shift inside the organization itself, which rebranded in August 2025 from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to Blood Cancer United to better represent patients diagnosed with more than 100 types of blood cancers beyond leukemia and lymphoma.
The 2026 Atlanta campaign set a fundraising goal of $2 million to support blood cancer research, advocacy, and local patient support programs, according to the event listing on Light The Night's website. Nationally, the organization has invested more than $1.8 billion in clinical research since its 1949 founding and has supported more than 80% of all blood cancer treatments approved by the FDA since 2017, per Movers & Makers.
The Scale of Blood Cancer in America
The American Cancer Society has projected that more than 192,000 people in the United States would receive a new blood cancer diagnosis in 2026, including roughly 67,790 leukemia cases, 88,240 lymphoma cases, and 36,000 myeloma cases, according to data compiled by City of Hope. That same data shows a person in the United States is diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma, or myeloma approximately every three minutes.
A September 2026 study published in Blood Advances and led by Blood Cancer United found that therapeutic advances for blood cancers between 1949 and 2024 saved an estimated 25.8 million life-years in the United States. The organization has also set a strategic goal of enabling blood cancer patients to gain more than 1 million additional years of life by 2040 through research investments and treatment access initiatives.
Local Treatment Close to Home
Atlanta families facing these diagnoses have local resources close by. Children's Healthcare of Atlanta's Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center performed 81 pediatric blood and bone marrow transplants in 2025 and treats more than 500 newly diagnosed pediatric cancer patients annually, a fact Hoodline reported in its coverage of a local 7-year-old's cancer battle. That center is among the hubs where young patients like Alexander receive treatment in the metro area.
Nationally, incidence rates for both Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma declined by approximately 0.6% to 0.7% per year between 2013 and 2022, according to epidemiological data from the American Cancer Society. For families like Edwards's and survivors like Taylor and Dixon, those broader trends offer some hope even as individual losses remain deeply personal.
