Member Profile: Charlotte Pancreatic Cancer Alliance

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Latest research shows that 97% of Americans now have a smartphone.  This represents nearly 300 million devices and a level of connectivity never seen before.

Yet despite this unprecedented level of connectivity and access to information, the vast majority of Americans know very little about pancreatic cancer, the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S.

Founded in 2020, the Charlotte Pancreatic Cancer Alliance was created to increase awareness of the disease with a hyper local focus on the fast-growing Charlotte, North Carolina region located in the Southeast USA.  With a regional population of 2.9 million, Charlotte is recognized as one of America’s fastest growing cities with a 15.2 percent increase in population since 2010.  The Charlotte Pancreatic Cancer Alliance wants to tap into this fast-growing population, and its connectivity to smartphones, to create greater awareness.

To meet this goal, the Charlotte Pancreatic Cancer Alliance executes our mission with a focus on 3 things:

  1. We build community. We use our knowledge and relationships to build and connect the Charlotte region’s diverse pancreatic cancer community.
  2. We share stories. Storytelling is the best way to teach, persuade and build understanding.  We use stories to connect the greater Charlotte region to the pancreatic cancer cause.
  3. We create purple buzz. We use our expertise in marketing, social media, and public relations to create local buzz and awareness for pancreatic cancer.

Our logo has great meaning to our three founders (Grace Lynch, Patti Weber, and Mark Weber) and reflects our organization’s commitment to raising awareness.  Charlotte is known as the “Queen City,” and the crown is a popular symbol that ties to the city’s history.  The three jewels inside the crown represent the three family members that our founders lost to pancreatic cancer. Grace lost her niece, Carmen Reyes, to the disease.  The Webers are a married couple.  Patti lost her father, Jim Benson, and Mark lost his mother, Shirley Weber, to pancreatic cancer.

The Charlotte Pancreatic Cancer Alliance raises awareness for pancreatic cancer 365 days of the year using a variety of platforms.  We invite you to view our 2020 Impact Report to see how we created awareness during our first year of operations amidst the global pandemic.

Please visit our website and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.  We invite you to like and share our content as we work together as one World Pancreatic Cancer Coalition family to increase awareness and rewrite the story of pancreatic cancer.

To learn more about the Charlotte Pancreatic Cancer Alliance, visit their website here.

Member Profile: Dawn Hill Fight Foundation

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Pictured above: Participants in the annual Dawn’s 5k Dash

In 2016, Dawn Hill was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer at the age of 47. After obtaining a second option, she began a clinical trial at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD. Dawn fought like a feisty WARRIOR for 16 months, and even worked full-time for 8 of those months, before passing away at the young age of 48. During Dawn’s journey she was surrounded by her Running Warriors Run Group who spent 4 days a week together (for nearly 3 years) training for various local races. Dawn always spoke of getting better and PAYING ALL THE GOODNESS FORWARD that was showered upon her during her journey!! She always said patients battling cancer shouldn’t be worried about their finances, but instead should have their mind and strength saved for their FIGHT!

In her honor, her wife Rebekah Cugle, along with some of the Running Warriors group members, created the Dawn Hill Fight Foundation, Inc. (DHFF) and were officially incorporated in 2018 as a 501c3 non-profit organization.

With the help of corporate sponsors and local businesses, DHFF hosts an annual 5k Run/Walk in Maryland, with a virtual option available too! All race registration monies collected are provided directly to patients battling pancreatic cancer. Rebekah, the President of DHFF, calls each patient and connects with them on a very personal level, learning about their diagnosis, journey, families, treatments, etc. while creating long-lasting friendships with many patients and their families.

DHFF also holds additional fundraisers throughout the year at local restaurants and on Facebook. Additionally, they fundraise through Amazon Smile as a designated charity, to continue their ‘giving back and paying it forward’ to patients while waiting for the next Dawn’s 5k Dash fundraiser to Kick-Off!

Dawn touched so many lives and quickly made a huge impact on others! Inspiring, encouraging, and motivating them, daily, through shared Facebook posts and stories.

We hope to keep her spirit alive and are committed to honoring her wishes of Paying it Forward through our many fundraising efforts.

As we press on, we hope to continue to grow and help as many patients as possible!

Helping Families — Raising Awareness — Providing Hope

Instagram — dawns5kdash

Facebook — Dawn Hill Fight Foundation Page

To learn more about the Dawn Hill Fight Foundation, visit their website here.

Member Profile: RicerChiAmo Onlus

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One of the founders of RicerChiAmo Onlus, Gian Luca Baiocchi, speaking at their annual Fun for Charity event in 2019.

RicerChiAmo Onlus is based in Brescia, Italy, and was founded in 2016 by Gian Luca Baiocchi (ASST Spedali Civili di Bescia and Univ. of Brescia), Lidia Beltrami, and Paola Masserdotti. RicerChiAmo Onlus was founded on the statutory aim of promoting scientific research on digestive system neoplasms.

RicerChiAmo is built on the belief that scientific research is an essential weapon to beat cancer, a universal way, because scientific results — in the medical field and others — are shared indiscriminately across countries and latitudes and are long-lasting, as they are verifiable and usable by everyone, equally to develop new knowledge.

RicerChiAmo devolves all proceeds from donations to the funding of new national and international research projects, fellowship for young researchers in support of initiatives to be started up or already started up, collaborating with hospitals and research centers around the world. They also promote initiatives to create awareness on the importance of screening tests and early diagnoses and talks on the risk and protection factors or cancer of the digestive system.

Learn more about RicerChiAmo at their website.