Emrich walks across Ohio to raise awareness in 2003.

In 2002, upon learning that there was very little work being done in the field of cancer prevention for children, Rob Emrich founded The Keren Emrich Foundation in memory of Rob's sister. Rob sold his car and stocks to fund the fledling organization and enlisted the help of his high school and college friend Matt Youngner, who would serve as the organization's first Excecutive Director. The foundation led to Road of Life - Cancer Prevention for Kids. 

In a short amount of time, Road of Life’s comprehensive cancer prevention curriculum has made a big impact on children in the Columbus, Ohio area.  The curriculum was piloted in the Columbus Public Schools just one year after Road of Life’s inception, and in 2005, Road of Life partnered with mentoring organization City Year Columbus to deliver its health lessons during City Year’s after school programs.  The results were as follows: students were 26% more likely to know that smoking makes it more difficult to excel at exercise and sports and 40% more likely to report eating fruits and vegetables each day.

Curriculum pilot with City Year in 2005.

Knowing that one out of three people develop some sort of cancer in their lifetime and one out of two cancers is preventable, the organization is looking to expand its reach in order to touch more young lives as not every child learns the importance of exercise and nutrition in their physical education classes.  With this objective in mind, the organization is providing its health curriculum to TeachForward, an online community developed at Harvard University. On TeachForward, educators are able to search for, rate and share lessons with teachers across the country. Road of Life hopes to make it possible for every classroom in the United States to have quality cancer prevention programming.