Featured Series

Young and Navigating Cancer

A multi-format project on what happens when health systems aren’t built for young patients with cancer.

Trailer for Washington Post short doc “One Last Wish.”

The Overview:

Young and Navigating Cancer began with one urgent question: Why are cancer rates rising among young adults? That question evolved into a deeply reported series combining first-person narratives, hard data, and accountability-driven reporting aimed at exposing a growing health crisis.

The project spans multiple formats—an immersive story package, a vertical video-driven interactive, a short documentary, a podcast episode, a mini social-video series, and even a comic—turning data into human stories, exposing systemic gaps in care, and centering the voices of young adults navigating cancer.

Each format served a distinct purpose:

1

Immersive story package & short doc:

Combines data, research, and immersive visuals to guide audiences through trends, systemic gaps, and intimate moments, bringing the crisis to life.

2

Vertical-first interactive:

Centers the experiences of millennials navigating cancer and creatively shows what it's like to be young, sick and underserved — in a visual language rooted in the cultural touchstones of the generation most affected.

3

Service-focused social videos & comic:

Provides practical guidance for young patients navigating a health system not designed for them.

Story Highlights

Tanner and Shay’s Story

PROJECT CONTRIBUTION:

```
Pitched, sourced and co-reported
```
```
Lead filmmaker and editor 
```
```
Contributing podcaster
```

Story Highlights

Immersive story package:

230K views

Read

As more young adults are diagnosed with cancer, Tanner and Shay are having to balance a life and death decision: whether to start a family as Tanner is dying.

Short Doc:

470K views

Watch

At just 25, Tanner Martin was diagnosed with Stage 4 colorectal cancer. Amid hospital visits, endless scans and painful treatments, he and his wife, Shay, faced an agonizing question: Could they still chase their dream of starting a family?

Since 2000, the rate of new cancer diagnosis for people ages 15 to 49 has climbed by 10 percent. This year, more than 200,000 people in that age group will be newly diagnosed with cancer. In this episode, I sat down with Post Reports' host Elahe Izadi to talk about how my own cancer diagnosis three years ago, when I was 26, motivated me to report on the realities facing more younger adults.

PODCAST EPISODE:

Listen

Story Highlights

The new faces

of cancer

PROJECT CONTRIBUTION:

```
Pitched, sourced and reported
```
```
Lead filmmaker
```
```
Video editor
```

Story Highlights

VERTICAL-VIDEO INTERACTIVE:

Read

Young cancer patients are reclaiming the narrative around illness — online, unfiltered and on their own terms. This is what living with cancer in your 20s, 30s and 40s is like.

Story Highlights

mini Social video Series

PROJECT CONTRIBUTION:

```
Hosted, filmed and edited by me
```

Created in a low-fi, reporter-to-camera style, the series provides practical guidance for the young cancer community, demystifying the realities of being a young patient, and fostering a sense of connection among viewers. Part of our social experiment also included a comic, which you can read here.

‍ ‍

Story Highlights