Many people around the world have a condition called alopecia, which affects the hair follicles and can cause baldness.

For Buffalo Bills rookie Landon Jackson, he’s made it his mission to help kids who grow up like him, feeling self-conscious about how they look.

“My dad told me at a really young age that God gives his toughest battles to his toughest soldiers,” he said.

Jackson has always found solace in sports. 

“Once I got into sports really heavy, I feel like that kind of built my brotherhood with certain people,” he said. “Made me I guess kind of value myself.”

But there were times that was difficult to figure out when he was growing up with alopecia, the autoimmune condition that causes hair loss. 

“I was about to turn 5 almost and they started noticing a small little spot in the back of my head,” he said. “And then it just kept growing [and] kept growing. By the time I got to 6, the whole back of my head was bald. [At] 6 and a half, it just started spotting everywhere. And once I hit 7, I just decided to completely shave it and I’ve been shaving every two, three days since then.”

Being bald at 7 years old, he heard the little jabs from classmates in school and had anxiety about his appearance. 

“A hat was my best friend at first. Always had a hat on. Just kind of insecure, scared,” he said.

But with the help of his parents, as he grew, so did his self-confidence. For many years, he refused to wear a hat to show it. He looked up prominent athletes with alopecia, like former NBA player Charlie Villanueva and NFL player Ryan Shazier.

“I guess once you got a lot bigger than everybody that kind of stops, because it gets to the point where people don’t want to mess with the biggest guy,” said Jackson, who now stands 6’6” and weighs more than 260 pounds.

Jackson doesn’t hold any grudges; he says it was just kids being kids, even if it wasn’t right. Still, he understands the toll it can take.  

“You don’t need to worry about what anybody thinks of you,” he said. “You don’t need to let anybody think that they’re better than you just based off you being a little bit different.”

That’s a message he’s been spreading since high school through college and now into the NFL, regularly talking with kids like him in hopes of helping them through it and working with organizations to advocate for those with alopecia.

He recently met with young Bills fan Emerson Ziewicki, who also has alopecia.

With the help of his wife, Grace, Jackson wants to start his own foundation one day to continue lifting others through his platform.  

“God didn’t just give me alopecia for no reason. I could probably save somebody’s life that’s thinking about committing suicide that has alopecia,” he said. “That’s my biggest thing, to give back to everybody I possibly can. And if it saves anybody from depression, thoughts of suicide, I definitely want to be there for them.”