The condition she had never heard of until she had it

She had trained in swimming and volleyball for close to a decade, and she wrote, illustrated, and worked in photography and cinematography, because she liked being engaged in a lot of things at once and never wanted that to change. Then, she says, at 14 she was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. "I felt truly lost and scared, not wanting to lose everything that I enjoyed," she says.

The part that stayed with her was how little she had known going in. It is a plain sentence about a common condition, and also a fair description of how alone a newly diagnosed kid is.

I have never heard of arthritis affecting youth before dealing with the disease myself.

Chloe Guan

What happened next she describes as unexpected: "an unexpected phenomenon occurred, as my curiosity grew despite my pain." She asked her physicians a lot of questions and read into her own condition, and she says she wrote an essay on breakthroughs in medical treatments for rheumatoid arthritis that won a merit award. Then she turned outward, reaching, in her words, "out to my community, wanting to make a positive impact to help other youth with the same condition as me."

Rheumheroes is what came of that, a peer-support initiative for young people living with juvenile arthritis. She started it in May 2024, the month she was diagnosed, and she is building it around three things she says she needed and could not find.

Peer-to-peer mentorship, pairing older teenagers and young adults living with the condition with younger, newly diagnosed children. Comfort kits for children undergoing treatment, with heat and ice packs, ergonomic pens, cozy blankets. And community meet-ups, accessible and physically low-impact, picnics and arts and crafts and walkathons, so children can enjoy childhood activities in a safe environment and families can meet other families navigating the same diagnosis.

"Although I have not implemented any projects since then, I have recently revamped my initiative," she says.

Her leadership has been recognised outside her own project as well. She was peer-elected as the top representative of Shad's values at the Shad program, and she holds a $3,000 Marianopolis College scholarship for leadership.