About the Program

The Streetlight team is made up of 55+ University of Florida students (mostly premed and all volunteers) who companion with these hospitalized adolescents/YAD through daily room visits (3 -6 p.m.), evening teen programming (6:30 -8:30 p.m.), art collages as identity door profiles, room customization, and internet support linking them to teens in their own hospital and beyond.

[ What is Palliative Care? Learn more... ]

Streetlight team members help adolescents manage their health condition with more personal control in navigating the transitions ahead - which can include a return to 'the street,’ a move to adult care, a relapse, or death. Whatever lies ahead, the team is with them through it all. Put simply...They provide the peer companionship that gets lost over a long course of chemo.  They befriend the Cystic Fibrosis (CF) youth who can now only do homebound schooling, or the Sickle Cell teen that can't stay in school enough to maintain friends or grades.  

Streetlight Patient Populations

Streetlight patients come from the 17 county area of North Central Florida served by Shands Hospital at UF, which includes many indigent and underinsured families. The primary disease populations presenting in our adolescent patients are cancer, Cystic Fibrosis, and Sickle Cell Disease. They each have their own difficult issues, but what they share in common is fear, alienation and psychosocial disruption - which greatly affects their compliance and in turn their prognosis, as well as their relationship with their community. 

Adolescents have been called the "Forgotten Tribe" of cancer.  This fall we will begin to work with the organization "I'm Too Young For This" [i2y] which is becoming a popular internet voice for the young adult with cancer.  Our cancer youth need peer companions through their long treatment, and a celebration at the End of Chemo with a party and a printed biography of their experience.

[ Discover how the Streetlight Team interacts with cancer patients ]

[ Read "Life is a Beach", an essay reflecting life for a teen with cancer ]

As funds come in we are devloping a TEENZONE on each pediatric wing; rooms customized with teen themes.  We want to maintain better contact with them as they move out of the hospital as cancer survivors.  Better follow up work would be possible with improved infrastructure, personnel, and outreach .  Young adults who survive cancer are not "out of the woods'" yet, and need support and encouragement to follow through on a regular heath care regimine, so that relapse  or other complications do not sneak up on them.   

Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Patients

Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is an inherited life-limiting illness.  The average survival rate is 35 years, but the adolescents we serve at Shands live much shorter lives, many dying between 18 and 25 years of age - because we see the very sickest here. CF-ers are most infectious to each other, which makes community impossible except through internet connections.  There has never been a teenage CF website, and we are working to create one;  a type of CF social network, so that friendships and support can be maintained.  

[ Discover how the Streetlight Team interacts with CF patients ]

[ Read "Life is a Beach", an essay reflecting life for a teen with CF ]

Unlike the cancer youth that is blindsided with a diagnosis in high school, these adolescents have known all along thath they would die young.  Depression and despair is epidemic in this population.  Its not so much that their life is full of pain.  It is the cumbersome daily treatments four hours a day, the complex dietary demands, the restricted activities, and the knowledge that even doing all this 'right' will not save their life or even extend it.  Their greatest challenge is finding and creating meaning for themselves in a shortened and overly burdensome life. There are some courageous CF heroes that could be examples and inspirations to others, but it is difficult to pull together a group of youth when they cannot even be in the same room with each other.  The obvious answer is media:  video, internet, cellphones, texting, and youtube.  We are living in an age where the solution is very accessible - with increased funding and resources. 

Sickle Cell Patients

The Sickle Cell youth is born through a recessive gene from each parent - almost always unknowingly. It is primarily a disease carried in the African American population, and it is characterized by bouts of excruciating pain that can occur in any part of their body, and last as long as several weeks.  Awareness, testing, and support is slow in coming.

[ Discover Streetlight team interactions with Sickle Cell patients ]

[ Read "Life is a Beach", an essay reflecting life for a teen with Sickle Cell]

One of our early experiences with Sickle Cell patients was with a 19 year old young man, doubled over in pain, and trying not to cry. 

He said, "Ms. Rebecca, we've got to do something about this.  We people with sickle cell have got to come together and support each other.  We've got to have a march, or a basketball benefit, or something!  I don't know anybody with sickle cell, but I know they're out there.  And that just ain't right."  We knew they were "out there." 

In fact, several other teens with SCD were just down the hall from him, but because of confidentiality rules we could only assure him that he was not alone.  Our goals with Sickle Cell are to help get them together outside the hospital in support groups, raise awareness in the community so school teachers, employers, and family members become more sensitive and supportive. Keeping pace in school, holding down a job, and just living a normal life can seem almost impossible because of their frequent hospitalizations.  Failure is their constant companion.