Tatiana Schlossberg, an environmental journalist, author, and the granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy, has passed away at the age of 35 following a widely reported fight against an aggressive type of blood cancer. Her family confirmed her death on Tuesday via the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, stating, “Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts.” The announcement was signed by her husband, George Moran, their children, and her close and extended relatives.
Her death follows just weeks after she disclosed publicly in that she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a rapidly progressing blood cancer featuring a rare mutation more common in older patients. She noted that with this mutation, called Inversion 3, she was given less than a year to live, as it rendered the disease particularly hard to treat.
Battle with leukemia
Schlossberg recounted that doctors first found irregularities in her bloodwork soon after she gave birth to her second child in May 2024, when a doctor observed her severely high white blood cell count. What might have been mistaken for a complication from pregnancy instead triggered a series of examinations that identified leukemia, just as she was recuperating from childbirth and looking after a young child at home.
Her medical care involved lengthy hospital stays, aggressive chemotherapy, and at least one stem cell or bone marrow transplant, which utilized a donation from her sister, Rose Schlossberg. In her writing, she spoke openly about the jarring reality of receiving a terminal prognosis after always viewing herself as very healthy, mentioning her routine runs in Central Park and a previous fundraising swim across the Hudson River for blood cancer research.
Journalist and author
A native of New York City, Schlossberg was the middle child of Caroline Kennedy and the artist-designer Edwin Schlossberg. She was raised mostly away from direct political attention, despite belonging to one of the nation’s most closely watched families.
After graduating from and undertaking further studies at the University of Oxford, she pursued a career dedicated to environmental concerns and climate change. She served as a science and climate reporter for and wrote for other publications such as and . In 2019, she released the book , which explores the impact of daily routines on worldwide pollution and climate change.
Previously, she worked as a reporter for The Record in northern New Jersey, covering a broad range of topics from crime to extreme weather and earning recognition as .
A complex public voice
In her New Yorker essay and other comments, she expressed criticism of the policies promoted by her cousin, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., contending that his stance on public health and research funding was damaging and “” to her and their family.
She described how an increasing amount of her life was spent in the care of medical professionals and scientists, while “Bobby cut nearly half a billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, a technology with potential applications against some cancers,” and also reduced billions in funding from the . She expressed concern over financial support for leukemia and bone-marrow studies at Memorial Sloan Kettering, where she was a patient, and noted that certain trials her cousin jeopardized represented her sole opportunity for putting her cancer into remission.