CEDAR RAPIDS &#8212 A roomful of hands slowly rose when teacher Jean Oberbroeckling asked if any of her students know someone with cancer.

“It’s amazing how much cancer has touched the lives of kids,” said Oberbroeckling, a Program for Academic and Creative Talent teacher at Harding Middle School and a cancer survivor herself.

While the classroom’s experience – most had uncles, aunts or grandparents with the disease – illustrates the pervasiveness of cancer, addressing the questions and concerns of that age group has largely been overlooked.

A new Web site, designed by Cedar Rapids and Iowa City area teens, may fill that void.

The name itself – “Cancer Really Sucks!” – is evidence of its target audience. The Web site is www.cancerreallysucks.org.

“We knew that teenagers wouldn’t come to a support group to discuss this, but they would go to their computers,” said Beth Hammell of Cedar Rapids, one of the founders of Gems of Hope, the parent organization behind the site. The group recruited Paul Goetzman, a Kennedy High School senior who had volunteered to design the Gems of Hope Web site, to work on the new project.

Both of his grandfathers died of cancer, said Goetzman, 17, of Hiawatha, making the issue a personal one.

“It kind of motivated me,” he said. “I feel proud to work on this because there’s nothing like this out there and there’s a need, I think.”

Sydney Harman, 19, a University of Iowa junior who also helped with the site, said she wished a similar outlet existed when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“I was definitely scared, but I was also a little in denial and confused,” she said. “I didn’t want to bother the adults in my life with questions.”