RAW: VA: TEEN PUSHES FOR PROSTHETIC COVERAGE CHANGES
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RICHMOND, Virginia (WTVR) — For 13-year-old Gavin Yonce, baseball is more than a game.
“I love being active and being with friends, and baseball is just my favorite thing to do when I’m active,” Gavin said.
Three years ago, his family was facing a diagnosis that would change all of their lives.
“Gavin started having leg pain when he was 10. Doctors thought it was just growing pains,” his mother, Jenny Yonce, said.
Doctors at Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU diagnosed Gavin with Ewing sarcoma, a rare bone cancer in his right leg.
The Mechanicsville boy’s family says he had only about a 10% chance of survival without chemotherapy and life-altering surgery.
“It’s really scary to watch your son and know that he’s going to have to deal with so much,” Jenny said. “And at the time, we didn’t know he was going to have his leg amputated.”
Gavin underwent a total of 14 rounds of chemo over the course of 9 months while spending two to five nights in and out of the hospital, followed by a rotationplasty procedure, a limb-sparing surgery that allowed him to remain active after treatment. As he recovered, he learned life with limb loss would require more than determination.
“I learned that there’s different names for cancers and that you need different prosthetics for different activities,” Gavin said.
Despite the challenges, he stayed focused on getting back to the things he loved.
“I just kept trying to keep going,” he said.
But after treatment ended, the Yonce family discovered another obstacle.
Insurance covered an everyday prosthetic designed for walking, but not the specialized prosthetic Gavin needed to run, swim and play baseball.
“He’s an athlete by heart and by nature, born athlete,” Jenny said. “He needed something that could get him moving a little bit more. So that’s when we realized, when we looked into it more, that insurance wasn’t going to cover that.”
Instead of accepting that reality, the Yonce family turned their experience into advocacy.
They joined So Every BODY Can Move (SEBCM), a national campaign working to expand insurance coverage for activity-specific prosthetic and orthotic devices.
The mission is personal for the organization’s national campaign lead, Nicole Ver Kuilen, who also lost a leg to bone cancer as a child.
“My journey starts back when I was 10 years old, and I lost my leg to osteosarcoma, bone cancer,” Ver Kuilen said. “Growing up, I did not have access to what I needed to be physically active.”
The organization is supporting legislation across the country, including Virginia’s House Bill 216, sponsored by Del. Dan Helmer (D-Fairfax). The proposal would require certain health insurance plans to cover activity prosthetics and orthotics for people with limb loss or mobility impairments.
“What this legislation is doing is putting into law that our community deserves access and can access more than one device for those essential daily movements, for exercise, for physical activity, and for just basic hygiene,” Ver Kuilen said.
Earlier this year, Gavin traveled to the Virginia General Assembly to share his story with lawmakers.
“I talked about how I need running prosthetics to get around, and that insurance doesn’t cover that right now. So we need to get that,” he said.
So far, 15 states have passed similar legislation. Supporters hope Virginia will be among the next as part of the campaign’s goal of passing laws in 28 states before the 2028 Paralympic Games.
For Jenny, who now serves as SEBCM Virginia’s co-state lead, the effort is ensuring that every child has the opportunity to move.
“Movement is a right, and we feel like he has that right to move and to be active and live an active lifestyle,” she said. “So Every BODY Can Move is all about expanding health insurance to have insurance companies cover prosthetics — activity prosthetics specifically.”
As for Gavin, his message to other children facing obstacles is simple:
“Just keep going. Never give up on what you love.”
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