JFK's granddaughter Tatiana Schlossberg dies aged 35

Former President John F Kennedy's granddaughter Tatiana Schlossberg has died at the age of 35, just one month after she opened up about her terminal cancer diagnosis.

A post on the JFK Library Foundation's Instagram account announced the news on Tuesday (December 30).

"Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning," it read. "She will always be in our hearts."

The post was signed off as being from Schlossberg's immediate family, including husband George, and their two children, Edwin and Josephine, as well as her parents and siblings.

Schlossberg was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, a form of blood and bone cancer where abnormal myeloid stem cells multiply uncontrollably, crowding out healthy cells, shortly after the birth of her second child.

To try and combat the aggressive disease, she underwent two rounds of chemotherapy, two stem cell transplants and participated in several clinical trials.

Yet despite the tragedy of her diagnosis, Schlossberg continued to champion the importance of healthcare for cancer patients, in particular, how vital vaccines were to help protect their impaired immunity.

This meant speaking out directly against her relative, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the current US Secretary of Health and Human Services, for his vocal anti-vaccine stance.

In her November essay in The New Yorker, which was published on the anniversary of JFK's assassination, she said: "As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers."

In the same essay, Schlossberg’s thoughts had also turned towards her own death, and how she was concerned for the impact it would have on her wider family, particularly after the Kennedys had already famously suffered so much.

Her grandfather, President Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963, and her uncle, John F Kennedy Jr, died in a plane crash in 1999.

Her younger brother, Jack Schlossberg, is currently running for Congress in New York.

"For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry," Schlossberg wrote.

"Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family's life, and there's nothing I can do to stop it," she said.

Her death has left a huge hole not only in the Kennedy family, but also in the wider community, as prior to her cancer diagnosis, Schlossberg had been a successful and lauded environmental journalist.

Although she covered many areas, her primary interest lay in climate change, with many of her articles for publications such as The New York Times exploring the ongoing impact of changes to our world and how we could combat it.

"I think climate change is the biggest story in the world, and it's a story about everything," she told NBC News in 2019. "It's about science and nature, but it's also about politics and health and business. To me, looking at this as a journalist, it seemed like a really important story to tell."

"And if I could help communicate about it, that might inspire other people to get involved and work on the issue," she said.

If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact the American Cancer Society on 1-800-227-2345 or via their live chat feature, available 24/7 every day of the year.