A Card Game Helps Kids Understand Cancer—and Talk About It
When Daniel Zhang was 9, his grandmother’s pancreatic cancer diagnosis changed the way he saw illness. He struggled to understand why treatments meant to help her could also leave her feeling weaker. Years later, he turned that experience into a way to help other children facing similar questions.
Zhang, now 17, created Tumor Tactics with his friend Zachary Tou. The multiplayer card game teaches children about cancer while giving them a welcoming way to discuss what a loved one may be going through. “Our goal is to be able to alleviate some of that confusion, that stress, that helplessness that kids may feel when seeing their close loved ones go through this disease,” Zhang said.
The idea grew from two shared interests: helping younger students learn science and playing card games. Zhang and Tou first started STEAMLabs, a club at their San Diego high school that offered free science activities for elementary schoolers. It has since grown into an international nonprofit. As juniors, they began developing Tumor Tactics, moving from a Google Doc to a finished game with help from a student graphic designer. They sourced its components from manufacturers and assembled the kits themselves.
In each round, players act as doctors caring for a patient with skin, lung, and colon tumors. Cards introduce medical events, treatment approaches, and interventions; tokens track each tumor’s strength. The first player to cure all three wins. Zhang’s father, Tou’s mother—both doctors—and their biology teacher helped ensure the medical details were sound.
The familiar card-game format was a natural choice for the friends. “Zach and I loved playing card games,” Zhang said. “That’s how we met, through playing Pokemon growing up, or other games, like Exploding Kittens or UNO.”
Tumor Tactics has already reached young players at the San Diego County Fair and in local elementary schools. The team has demonstrated it to more than 1,000 young people, brought it to 150 elementary students, and distributed more than 225 decks to Scripps Health and Rady Children’s Hospital. At one school event, about 37% of students answered every question on a cancer-knowledge quiz correctly before playing; afterward, around 91% did.
For Zhang, the conversations the game made possible mattered even more than the quiz results. Some children felt comfortable sharing experiences they had kept to themselves, and he recognized parts of his own story in theirs. “That was honestly the best part,” he said.
Families and educators can download a printable version of Tumor Tactics for free. Boxed sets cost $17.99, with 10% going to the American Cancer Society and the remaining 90% supporting the production of kits for schools. Title I educators can also request a kit.
As Zhang and Tou look toward college and possible futures in medicine, Zhang hopes their game will help children feel informed, heard, and inspired. “It’s truly something that we’re really hopeful will inspire the next generation of doctors.”
