When a skater steps onto the ice in an arena filled with spectators, and millions more watching at home worldwide, something remarkable happens. Strangers are brought together in an immediate shared community. They hold their breath during a jump, gasp after a fall, and rise to their feet with a rousing applause after a great performance. For those few minutes, all differences vanish and we are in the moment together.

Outside the arena, there is another global experience that binds us together with equal intensity: cancer.

Cancer is the ultimate equalizer. It does not care about your tax bracket, your zip code or anything else. Whether a personal diagnosis or watching a loved one, virtually every family is touched by this disease. A club formed, one that nobody asked to join, but within which millions are all connected.

I first joined the club when my mother, Dorothy, was diagnosed. I watched her endure the disease with dignity, grace and humor. When treatment made her lose her hair, she put on a wig and said, “This chemotherapy is so phenomenal. I hated my hair and these wigs are so much easier.” When she lost her appetite, she said, “Oh, this chemotherapy is wonderful, I finally lost all this weight!”

Just before my 1976 junior national championship, my mom had her left breast removed along with most of the inside of her left arm, she was undergoing chemo and she was wearing a wig… but she was there to cheer me on from the stands with the twinkle in her eye. She was my role model. She’d always thought I was going to the Olympics. In 1980 when I carried the U.S. flag in the opening ceremony, and again in Sarajevo four years later when I won gold, her dream became my reality.

Her resilience stayed with me, and without realizing it, she taught me how to face my own battles years before I stepped into the hospital as a testicular cancer patient. My mother’s voice echoed in my head. I countered cancer’s negativity with my positivity and its dark with my own light.

After my “Filet-o-Scott” surgery, my skating family rallied around me. Kristi Yamaguchi and Kurt Browning kept my spirits high, cracking jokes and keeping me grounded when I couldn’t stand on my skating edges. From there, I created the 4thAngel concept with Cleveland Clinic: 1st Angel = Your oncologist, 2nd Angel = Your oncology nurse, 3rd Angel = Your Friends and Family, 4th Angel: A survivor who has “been there and done that,” smiling on the other side and there to help you.

Today, cancer is a unifier and a connector. The brightest minds of scientists, oncologists, and engineers, along with the addition of AI, have created a massive global alliance to find new and improved treatment options to analyze vast datasets, tailor immunotherapy treatments, take discoveries from the lab into hospitals and bring even greater hope for the future.

This isn’t a partisan issue; it’s a universal problem working toward a much-needed solution. Funding and advancing research to help every constituent to thrive for years longer in their community.

So how do we achieve victory? Just like figure skating has evolved to bigger jumps and more precise spins, our approach to medicine demands a higher standard.

I am acutely aware of the toll cancer treatment takes on patients and their families and the invaluable impact a strong support system – like the “angels” I referenced – has on a patient’s cancer care journey. With that understanding in mind, my hope is that all areas of cancer policy be approached with a patient-centered paradigm in mind, whether that be through funding for research and development of new treatments or implementation of programs that support direct patient care.

A patient-centered policy approach that focuses on a patient’s lived experience should be at the forefront of these discussions and would help to create the possibility of more opportunities for treatments and programs designed to lessen the physical and emotional toll cancer treatment can take on individuals. This is the ultimate mission – to be able to treat the cancer while sparing the patient, to the highest degree possible.

In skating, a fall isn’t the end of a program, it’s a moment in time within the program. You get back up and finish stronger than before. A cancer diagnosis is a heavy fall, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the journey.

Through my accomplishments on the ice, I have a platform and an opportunity to raise money and fund research to celebrate survivorship. Through my Scott Hamilton CARES Foundation (Cancer Alliance for Research, Education and Survivorship), we do our part to fund research that will hopefully turn cancer upside down in my lifetime – at a national level and in local markets through our Sk8 to Elimin8 Cancer program.

In this cancer club, like the skating rink, we replace fear with an exhale, and we trade the individual sport for the strength of the community. Working together, we flip the script so everyone will keep LIVING their best lives with their loved ones.