Christy Carlson Romano (Ren from Even Stevens) Shares Positive Cancer Screening Results

quote:

---

The “Even Stevens” actress, 41, said she and her husband Brendan Rooney both chose to get cancer screenings, partly because her family has a history of the disease and partly because of her relationship with “Dawson’s Creek” star James Van Der Beek, who passed away last week at the age of 48 from colorectal cancer.

---

quote:

---

The report analyzed annual U.S. mortality rates from 1990 to 2023 for the top five deadliest cancers for men and women younger than 50 years old—an age group that researchers have been tracking to understand early-onset cancer risk. Encouragingly, cancer mortality overall in the age group decreased by 44 percent. But rates of colorectal cancer among younger people have been steadily increasing in recent decades, and the disease has leaped from the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths in 1990 to the first in 2023.

“It is an inflection point,” says William Dahut, chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Society. “This is the first time it’s number one for cancer deaths overall for those under the age of 50.”

---