One year after Kristen Dahlgren chose to leave NBC News to focus on making breast cancer vaccines a reality, the journalist continues to receive support from her Today show family.
“I miss them all so much, but they have been so supportive,” Dahlgren, 52, exclusively told Us Weekly at the “It’s Up to Us” women’s health event on Saturday, May 3. “Hoda [Kotb], having gone through [breast cancer], was just a beacon of light for me about how to go through it with grace. Savannah [Guthrie] would write me when I was home and I wasn’t able to come into work and just check on me. She was fantastic.”
In 2019, Dahlgren first learned that she had stage 2 breast cancer. After eight rounds of chemotherapy and 25 rounds of radiation, she celebrated being cancer-free in late April 2020.
Nearly four years later, the journalist announced she was leaving NBC News to help launch the Cancer Vaccine Coalition, which aims to fast-track breast cancer vaccine research.
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“My diagnosis changed how I looked at the world and you reprioritize. I knew that my family was No. 1, but I also knew that I really wanted to help people in the world,” Dahlgren explained to Us while wearing a pink outfit from Amanda Uprichard and L’agence. “At the end of the day, it was being with my family and building a better world for my little girl, who just turned nine and is the light of my life. I don’t want her and her friends and her loved ones to go through what I went through.”
When discussing her Today show family, Dahlgren commended her coworkers and friends for being open about their experiences with cancer.
Al Roker previously shared his battle with prostate cancer in 2020, while Craig Melvin mourned the death of his brother Lawrence Meadows in 2020 after a years-long fight with stage 4 colon cancer.
More recently, Today’s Jill Martin chose to share her experience with breast cancer and raised awareness of BRCA gene mutations.
“They just all understand it, just as every person in America who knows and loves someone who’s gone through cancer,” Dahlgren said. “One in three of us will get cancer. My Today show family was there for me. They were supportive when I called the executive producer and I said, ‘Can I get a Disney princess wig since I’m bald’ and she said, ‘You go and do whatever you want.’ They were just lovely.”
Five years after being declared cancer-free, Dahlgren said she still worries about recurrence every day.
At the same time, she spends each day filled with hope at the progress being made for current and future fighters.
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“What we’re trying to do is spread hope about a cancer-free future,” Dahlgren proclaimed while hosting a women’s health event with Adrienne Maloof. “People might think that sounds like this crazy pie in the sky or way far off in the future, and it is not. We have vaccines to train your immune system to fight off cancer.”
Through her work with Cancer Vaccine Coalition, Dahlgren and her team have assembled many of the top breast cancer doctors and vaccine researchers in the world to focus on cancer vaccines for treatment and someday, prevention.
“We need to stand up for better treatments. We need to fund them. We need to encourage the government to fund them,” Dahlgren proclaimed. “And if we do that, we really can have a brighter cancer-free future in the short term, and not years and years down the road.”
