Pat's Fund is an incredible and wonderful organization designed to better help people understand the ins and outs of Auto Immune disease. The goal of Pat's fund is to communicate to the public how prevalent Auto-Immune disease is and how many families are effected. Their are currently over 80 Auto-Immune diseases and many times when a person is afflicted, they can end up with more that just one. I am a person with MS and have benefited greatly from this organization in therms of education, out-reach and support. Auto-Immune research is making incredible breakthrough's due to organizations like Pat's Fund.
I have recently come across Pat's Fund with the policy work I am doing for Washington state. Judi Rising is one of our state's most passionate advocates fighting for autoimmune disease awareness, education and advocacy. Her life has been personally touched by autoimmune disease and this has motivated her to create change and better understanding of the diseases that are impacted. She puts on an event called "Living with Autoimmunity" which brings the many different faces together to discuss relevant and impactful information. I have been very impressed with this organization from both a business and a personal perspective.
We hold fundraisers every year (the past 11) and donate the profits to Benaroya Reasearch Institute ( division of Virginia Mason Hospital , Seattle). We also hold an annual event " living with autoimunity" where people tith automune disease and their family can gather info. on how to live with the disease and what are the latest medical achievements.
50 million people in the U.S. live with autoimmune diseases. Pat's Fund has worked for 11 years following the death of Pat Barnes from a blood platelet autoimmune disease 7 weeks after diagnosis to bring attention to the 80 such diseases.
This very effective program has touched thousands of people and donated over $400,000 for research of such conditions as; Multiple Sclerosis, Type 1 Diabetes, Rheumatoid ARthritis, Lupus, Psoriasis, Scleraderma, Celiac's Disease & ITP. More information and donation options can be found at www.patsfund.org