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An International Sarcoma Awareness Week A Unique Opportunity The Team Sarcoma 2007 Initiative provides a unique opportunity for all members of the sarcoma community — sarcoma centers, sarcoma advocacy groups, patients, caregivers, survivors, friends and families around the globe — to work together for the common goals of increasing public awareness of sarcoma and raising funds to support sarcoma research, clinical trials, and patient and family services.
The 2007 Initiative consists of the Team Sarcoma Bike Tour, which is being held this year in the US (in the Lake Champlain area in Vermont) during July 14-21, 2007 and a variety of local Team Sarcoma events that will occur in various cities around the world. While the members of the “core” Team in Vermont are biking, they will be joined by people on local Team Sarcomas who will walk, run, bike, hike, spin, or swim in the countries where they live on one or more of the days that the core Team is cycling in Vermont. Collectively, these events become an internationally coordinated event forming an International Sarcoma Awareness Week.
A Brief History Last year 50 people participated on the “core” Team that biked in Denmark. They were joined by over 825* people participating in this event worldwide, including local Team Sarcomas at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Fox Chase Cancer Center, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, Huntsman Cancer Institute, and the West German Cancer Center at the University of Essen and Team Sarcomas that were formed by a number of sarcoma advocacy groups, among them Adult Bone Cancer Survivors, Amschwand Sarcoma Cancer Foundation, Brian Morden Foundation, Cure Alveolar Soft-Part Sarcoma International, Desmoid Tumor Research Foundation, Jennifer Hunter Yates Sarcoma Foundation, Sarcoma Alliance, and the Leiomyosarcoma Direct Research Foundation.
The “core” Team in Denmark had representatives from 10 different countries and 10 different sub-types of sarcoma. In the past three years The Team Sarcoma Initiative has had local Team Sarcomas in Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Ukraine, Sweden, and in a large number of states in the United States, including California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Washington State.
Oncologists, nurses, patients, caregivers, survivors, and friends and families participated in these events. Most of the 2006 Team Sarcomas had local press and media coverage which aided significantly in increasing public awareness of sarcoma. In this coverage, they discussed sarcoma and emphasized that they were part of the Team Sarcoma Initiative and stressed the international nature of the event. Some of the TV coverage was on regional and national TV and thus millions of people who knew nothing about sarcoma became aware of it.
An Exciting Goal for this Year Our goal this year is to have more than 1,000 people involved, worldwide, in the Team Sarcoma Initiative. We are uniquely positioned to achieve this goal because of growing participation in this Initiative. To allow the local Team Sarcomas flexibility in planning their events, we are incorporating two week-ends into the Initiative this year — i.e., local Team Sarcoma events can be held on July 14th through and including July 22nd. Currently there are 38 local Team Sarcomas in the process of planning events:
Take a look at the video presentation that we made that integrates information about sarcoma and the Team Sarcoma Initiative. You can view or download it by clicking on the following figure.
We are currently in discussion with sarcoma centers in several other countries about forming Team Sarcomas and we are in discussion with a few additional sarcoma advocacy groups about joining in the Team Sarcoma Initiative. Some of the local Team Sarcomas use their events as a fundraising opportunity while others concentrate exclusively on the awareness issue.
Please contact us to learn about any of the Team Sarcomas mentioned above, to participate on a Team sarcoma or to form a Team Sarcoma. We welcome everyone who wants to participate in this International Sarcoma Awareness Week. The more voices we have, the louder our voice will be.
There is strength in numbers!
Bruce
Bruce D. Shriver, PhD Editor-in-Chief, ESUN
* The number “770” that appears in the editorial, 770 People? Wait 'till Next Year, was arrived at before all of the local Team Sarcomas had reported the number of their participants in order to meet a publication deadline.
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