Nationwide, more than 400,000 people live with MS. In the Mid Florida Chapter area, over 10,000 are living with the disease. Every hour someone is diagnosed with MS and many lives are forever changed. To fund research, to provide hope, to find a cure, this is why we’re here.
The Mid Florida Chapter is proud to partner with chapters nationwide as part of the Promise: 2010 initiative - the first national fundraising campaign, focused on four targeted areas of research.
With a nationwide goal of $30 million, over a five-year period, each chapter’s commitment is critical to our success. The Mid Florida Chapter of the National MS Society has committed to raising $250,000 over five years to fund this campaign. The money raised will be in addition to funds that the chapter has already committed to the vital programs and services offered throughout our Chapter area.
Promise: 2010’s four targeted areas of research include:
- Tissue Repair and Protection
- MS Pediatric Care Centers
- Sonya Slifka Longitudinal Study
- MS Lesion Project
Nervous System Repair and Protection: This bold new initiative for tissue repair and protection in MS involves the largest grants ever offered by the Society and sets the stage for translating basic lab discoveries into clinical efforts to restore nerve function in people with MS. Interdisciplinary teams will develop non-invasive tools and models, and design clinical trials to pave the way for clinical testing.
Why is this exciting?
Bringing the dream to a reality. Protecting and repairing brain tissue could reverse the damage caused by MS and restore brain function.
Pediatric MS Treatment Centers: There are approximately 8,000-10,000 children or adolescents who have MS, and another 10,000-15,000 who have experienced what may be symptoms of MS. This disease is more difficult to diagnose in children, and many pediatricians are not familiar with MS. For these reasons, the National MS Society has established regional pediatric MS centers to set the standard for pediatric MS management and care and offer optimal medical and psychosocial support to children and their families. The centers create the framework to conduct critical research to understand how best to treat childhood MS.
Why is this exciting?
The centers are gathering critical data to ultimately help researchers worldwide better understand the course that MS takes from the very beginning of the disease, when symptoms first appear. Many believe that studying MS in children holds great promise for unlocking the mysteries of MS in adults.
The Sonya Slifka Longitudinal MS Study: The first study of its kind in the U.S., the Sonya Slifka Longitudinal MS Study is a repository of in-depth information about the lives of people with MS. Investigators are collecting detailed data from a national sampling of 2,000 individuals. This study integrates clinical information, healthcare practices, and socio-economic data to learn what happens to people with MS over time and what factors influence the long-term course of MS.
Why is this exciting?
The information we are gathering in this study fuels many aspects of our efforts to improve quality of life for people with MS. It helps us understand what therapies are working best and whether people have access to them. It allows us to share data with the scientific community. It also allows us to fuel our advocacy groups with information they need to inform policy makers about health care and disability rights.
The MS Lesion Project: This international collaboration seeks patterns in the MS damage seen in brain tissue where myelin has been stripped from nerve fibers – lesions - and attempts to correlate those findings with actual clinical signs, symptoms, and responses to therapy. People with MS experience the disease in so many different ways; some MS investigators wonder whether MS has a single cause, and whether a single therapy will be found to work for all those who have it.
Why is this exciting?
Understanding lesion patterns can provide more information about differences in the disease between individuals, which will enable doctors to make more accurate diagnoses, prognoses, and treatment decisions.
For more information about the Promise: 2010 initiative, including videos, stories, and progress reports, please visit the National MS Society’s site.