Thank you to our CLTI Working Group Patient Partners

From the desk of our CEO, Isabel Bjork:

I am in awe of the phenomenal patients and caregivers who joined the Foundation to Advance Vascular Cures on June 8th in San Francisco. The patients and caregivers were highly motivated and invested in their own health. Two had written a book; one patient spoke of publication in a journal; and a caregiver spoke passionately about the need to campaign and raise awareness within her community. Across all participants, there was a fervor for advocacy, a bias towards action, and a prevailing view that the solution to the challenges they faced in their health journey rested with increasing disease awareness - in their community and among primary care and other doctors.

I am grateful to work alongside these patients and others to do that much-needed awareness work. Here are a few examples of our current projects.

Our Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) Microgrant Program funds innovative patient partner-led work to increase awareness and screening of PAD. This year we are supporting the extraordinary Kim Campbell, who is working in Atlanta to build a network of patient partners, raise awareness about this devastating condition, and train future patient advocates. Our 2022 Health Equity Grant is funding a collaborative project between Thomas Jefferson University, Temple Health, and the Frazier Family Coalition to address high amputation rates among Black men in North Philadelphia. The team is partnering with barber shops and a local community center to educate and screen men for peripheral artery disease, the leading cause of amputations, as well as train health professionals to provide preventative care.

We could not do this important work without the engagement of the patient and caregiver partners photographed below.