When Jenny Ahlstrom was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2010, she was grateful for all the great work being done in myeloma, but saw gaps in support, tools, and funding that she believed could help patients navigate their disease and accelerate a cure.
She created the CrowdCare Foundation and the Myeloma Crowd with three goals: 1) educate and support patients, 2) use data to hasten a myeloma cure, and 3) fund critical
research
.
The Myeloma Crowd programs include: Myeloma Crowd website (with over 700,000 unique visitors per year), Myeloma Crowd Round Tables, Myeloma Coach (over 100 Coaches), Myeloma Crowd Radio (140 shows to date), Muscles for Myeloma, HealthTree.org (over 5,900 patient participants), and the Myeloma Crowd Research Initiative (funding five investigator projects). The HealthTree platform is first-in-class software that both supports myeloma patients over the lifetime of their disease but also aggregates patient data to rapidly answer critical research questions that could lead us to a cure.