On Saturday May 21st, the Alliance for Lupus Research along with the New York Jets held their annual “Walk With Us To Cure Lupus” event at the New Meadowlands Stadium. The event, which was hosted by MY 9 news anchor Brenda Blackmon, featured appearances by New York Jets owner Woody Johnson along with general manager Mike Tannenbaum, head coach Rex Ryan, as well as former players Greg Buttle, Wesley Walker, Bruce Harper, and Dave Herman.
The 5k walk drew over 4,000 participants and ended up raising over $500,000, which will be put towards research to find better treatments and ultimately prevent and cure systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE, or lupus), a debilitating autoimmune disease.
Some notes on the Alliance for Lupus Research:
1) The Alliance for Lupus Research (ALR) is a national voluntary health organization based in New York City that was founded in 1999 and is chaired by Robert Wood Johnson IV, a member of the founding family of Johnson & Johnson.
2) The ALR Board of Directors pays for all administrative and fundraising costs, therefore one hundred percent of all donations from the public, and the proceeds of the signature grassroots fundraising program, Walk with Us to Cure Lupus, go directly to support research programs.
3) ALR uses a multi-level review system to ensure that it supports only the finest and most relevant lupus research projects. Applications for funding are rigorously scrutinized through a system called peer-review, in which an individually tailored panel of scientific experts reviews and ranks each research proposal. Then the ALR’s Scientific Advisory Board provides a second level of scrutiny before making funding recommendations to ALR’s Board of Directors, whose members function as final, non-scientist reviewers.
4) Since its founding, ALR has given more money to lupus research than any non-governmental agency in the world; to date over $60 million has been committed.
For more information on the ALR check out www.lupusresearch.org