In very powerful testimony, members of the ALS community asked members of Congress to ensure the FDA acts with greater speed and regulatory flexibility during a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee.

As part of this year’s National Advocacy Conference, Dr. Bryan Traynor, senior investigator and chief of neuromuscular diseases at the NIH’s National Institute on Aging presented a case study to the ALS community to help better understand what we know today and what we are working toward for the future relating to genetics and prevention. ALS prevention has not only been a priority for Traynor, but for the ALS community at large.

After Terry Peterson was diagnosed with ALS in 2019, his family decided to preserve the memories of their time together by documenting their journey in a video.

Dr. Lauren Gittings, whose award was made possible directly through funds provided by The ALS Association Oregon and SW Washington Chapter, is a postdoctoral fellow from the Sattler Lab at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. We recently spoke with Lauren to learn more about her and her unique project focused on identifying cellular and molecular changes that underlie cognitive impairment in ALS patients carrying the C9orf72 (C9) repeat expansion mutation.

The ALS Association’s Certified Treatment Centers of Excellence and Recognized Treatment Centers are dedicated to doing whatever it takes to provide compassionate care in a supportive, family-oriented atmosphere to help their patients live longer and stronger lives. One such center is the Phil Smith Neuroscience Institute at Holy Cross Health located in south Florida. “No matter what, the patient always comes first,” says Tina Duane, Regional Program Manager at The ALS Association Florida Chapter.

We are pleased to share our 2021 Mid-Year Report, detailing the work and achievements that have shaped the first half of this year. You will see that for all of the challenges of the pandemic, we have successfully maintained focus on mission delivery and innovation, pledging to do “whatever it takes” to bring us closer to a cure for ALS and to make ALS a livable disease.

The ALS Association today announced that California’s legislature, in conjunction with the California Department of Public Health has approved $15 million over the next five years for the wraparound model of care and treatment of ALS in the state.

We are on an urgent mission to make ALS a livable disease by 2030, to discover and fund promising treatments and to discover a cure. Our best opportunity to fulfill this promise and to continue delivering in the areas of Care, Advocacy, and Research is to reinvigorate our commitment to work as one. Driven by this belief, we will move from a federated to a unified structure.

“If you had told us in 4th grade that we would have raised donated over $50,000, we wouldn’t have believed you,” Sydney says.

For nonprofit entities like The ALS Association, the filing of its Form 990 tax return is also an important tool to communicate the good stewardship and judicious financial management the Association has demonstrated while working toward its mission of creating a world without ALS.