4th Annual NYC Run-Walk-Hike for PF
4th Annual NYC Run/Walk for Pulmonary Fibrosis
Dear Friends:
While it feels like winter is never leaving, spring is right around the corner. With that in mind, I’d like to invite you to mark your calendar and join us for the “Fourth Annual” NYC Run-Walk to benefit Coalition for Pulmonary Fibrosis (CPF).
This year’s event will kick-off on Saturday, May 21, 2011, at 10 a.m. in NYC’s Central Park. Save the date, and stay tuned for details, donation options and how to organize a team.
As many of you know, Pulmonary Fibrosis is a fatal lung disease that takes the lives of approximately 40,000 Americans each year – the same number as breast cancer – and kills an estimated two-thirds of patients within five years of diagnosis. PF can strike anyone. There is no cure, no FDA approved treatment and the only solution is a lung transplant, for which only a small percentage of patients are eligible.
Our run/walk was first started as a grass roots effort to raise awareness of PF. In our first year, we gathered as a group of 25 in honor of my father, Tom Hales who suffered from Pulmonary Fibrosis and was fortunate enough to receive a life saving double-lung transplant in 2007. Thanks to this miracle, he continues to live an active life and will be participating in our event once again this year.
As our event has exceeded 200 participants, we are honoring all who are affected by PF: those whose lives have been taken by the disease, family members and advocates of PF patients, individuals awaiting lung transplants and others celebrating their recent transplants. Our gathering allows us to come together with the common goal of finding support in each other and helping fight this terrible disease together.
With your dedication and support over the last 3 years we have raised over $100,000. Your contributions have directly helped the CPF fund patient services and enhance research efforts.
This run/walk is a gift to all the patients alive now who would continue living if a treatment were discovered. Please help us make a difference for them.
Please join us on Saturday, May 21st as we set out to further increase awareness of Pulmonary Fibrosis and take another step toward finding a cure, or please consider making a contribution to the CPF in the name of our event (www.coalitionforpf.org).
We will be organizing a planning meeting in the next few weeks and would welcome your help. Please email me if you are interested in joining the planning committee.
Sincerely,
Terence Hales
Terence F. Hales
Board Member, Coalition for Pulmonary Fibrosis
408 West 57th Street, 9D
New York, NY 10019
Tel: 212-399-9312
Cel: 917-742-8586
tfhales@aol.com