Vasculitis Awareness Month 2016

Vasculitis Awareness Month 2016

(Kansas City, MO):

The Vasculitis Foundation Launches 2016 Vasculitis Awareness Month

Newswise — The Vasculitis Foundation has launched 2016 May Vasculitis Awareness Month. Now in its fifth year, the awareness campaign’s goal is to raise awareness about vasculitis, a rare, autoimmune disease affecting more than 30,000 patients each year.

From Cleveland Clinic's site:The prevalence of specific types of vasculitis in the United States is about 3/100,000 population for granulomatosis with polyangiitis (Wegener's granulomatosis), 3/100,000 for polyarteritis nodosa, 26/100,000 for giant cell arteritis, and 1/100,000 for Takayasu arteritis. For just this small sample of selected vasculitides, the combined prevalence is over 30/100,000 population. About 100,000 Americans per year are hospitalized for care of vasculitis. While these numbers are relatively small compared to heart disease or cancer, the impact of vasculitis is substantial most importantly to patients and their families, but also to society through the effect on our workforce and on our health care system.

The theme for 2016 Vasculitis Awareness Month is: “Victory over Vasculitis”. Executive Director, Joyce Kullman, explains that it’s an important theme because it highlights some of the critical issues and challenges facing vasculitis patients.

“This theme helps us to identify and define what victory would look like from the patient’s perspective,” says Kullman. “There are so many issues such as improving diagnostic times, , developing more effective and less evasive treatment, and educating both patients and health care professionals about vasculitis.Advances in these areas have been realized, but we still have a long way to go. Vasculitis Awareness Month is our chance to put these issues on an international stage.”

Using social media is key to spreading the word. “We target our awareness messaging not only to our patients, but we encourage them to share our information with their network of support—typically friends and family. We've created an awareness “toolkit” available on the VF website which makes it easier for everyone to access and share the information.”

In addition to a concentrated social media messaging campaign, the VF also hosts special events, educational conferences and online webinars and provides resources to educate patients and physicians about vasculitis.

The Vasculitis Foundation (VF) is the international organization for people with vasculitis. The VF empowers patients through disease education, raises awareness of vasculitis in the general public and medical community, and funds research to determine the cause, develop more effective treatments, and discover a cure. The VF is committed to improving the lives of current and future patients and is positioned as the definitive resource for patients, family members, medical professionals and researchers seeking information about vasculitis.

For information about vasculitis and the Vasculitis Foundation, please visit www.vasculitisfoundation.org.