About Us 
Annual Report
Annual Report
| Annual Report |
 |
 |
|
Our Vision: A World Without Kidney Cancer Our Mission: The Elimination of Death and Suffering From Renal Cancers Since it was established in 1990, consistent with the vision of the organization's founder, Eugene P. Schonfeld, Ph.D., the KCA's plan of work continues to be executed in these primary areas: 1) Education 2) Research 3) Advocacy A summary of the past year's program service accomplishments Education During the Fiscal Year ending October 31, 2009, we provided more than 70 education and support opportunities for patients, survivors, and caregivers in various U.S. cities, and including large, regional meetings, from which enduring educational materials were produced. We hosted online weekly informal chats for survivors and caregivers, and our online forum has grown to more than 3,000 members. We sponsored the Fourth European Kidney Cancer Symposium in Berlin, Germany. More than 600 medical professionals registered. Later in the year, more than 300 professionals attended the annual International Kidney Cancer Symposium in Chicago. Patient advocates who attended this meeting prepared summaries of the medical presentations that can be easily understood by patients and their families. From our suburban Chicago offices, we mailed several hundred information packets to families and provided physician referrals to hundreds of patients. Our membership database includes approximately 55,000 people in North America, including Canada, the United States, and more than 100 other countries. Goal: Increasing our outreach to patients globally How we accomplish this: By translating our publication, "We Have Kidney Cancer" into additional languages and making it available online Metric: Total languages supported to date is nine. We endeavor to add a new translation each year Goal: Increasing our outreach to medical professionals globally How we accomplish this: By sponsoring at least two international medical symposia yearly Metric: A meeting is held annually in Chicago with another in a different European country each year. Attendance in Europe has tripled over the prior year Research The Maita Lynn Gerber International Working Group completed its seventh year of kidney cancer data analysis, in the largest global project of its kind in this disease. Our Nurse Advisory Board completed a comprehensive revision of We Have Kidney Cancer, our signature publication that has grown to more than 110 pages, and it has been distributed around the world. Our partnership with EmergingMed, and other companies, resulted in the referral of dozens of patients to sites conducting clinical trials. Our Nuse Telephone Information Service answered hundreds of calls from patients. We made grants to the AUA Foundation and to the ASCO Foundation to support the work of young investigators. We also made a financial commitment to support a project associated with the Kidney Cancer SPORE. Goal: Increasing our knowledge about kidney cancer through sponsorship of research projects How we accomplish this: By working collaboratively with the ASCO and AUA research foundations to fund the work of young investigators Metric: The list of projects we have supported is published on our website, and at least two or more projects have been initiated each year for the past several years Advocacy In its role as an advocate on behalf of patients, we continued collaborations with organizations such as Lance Armstrong Foundation, National Cancer Comprehensive Network, Patient Advocate Foundation, the National Coalition for Cancer Research, Friends of Cancer Research, Research!America, and various groups concerned with improving the nation's health care. We continued highly effective collaborations with institutions interested in conducting cancer research, including our CEO's membership on NIH committes that are advisory to the Biomarkers Consortium and The Cancer Genome Atlas. Goal: To identify common goals aimed ultimately at the elimination of death and suffering from all cancers How we accomplish this: By striving to identify new opportunities for working collaboratively with other voluntary health organizations Metric: The number of relationships we have established continues to grow. As an example, in 2009 we participated in the Your Congress, Your Health initiative sponsored by Research!America, aimed at increasing public awareness of the need for improvement of our healthcare system and the promotion of research Our capacity to attain these objectives, as well as being able to identify new ones, relies primarily on the level of public support for our mission. Monetary contributions are essential to this accomplishment. Even in the most difficult times, we strive to identify new sources of revenue, as well as volunteers willing to assist us, so that our goals continue to be met. Our fulltime staff is very small (three or four people), so volunteers remain as an essential asset. This efficiency would not be possible without the dedication of our governing board, medical advisory board, volunteers, and other collaborators who contribute selflessly to advance our objective: the elimination of death and suffering from renal cancers. For a list of officers and directors, click here. |
| Last Updated ( Friday, 02 July 2010 12:21 ) |
