March is Autoimmune Disease Awareness Month! This is a great opportunity for bringing the autoimmune story to the millions yet undiagnosed and to the many medical and other healthcare professionals who may not be aware of the "family connection" in autoimmune diseases.

     How is AARDA celebrating this special month? Prevention Magazine is expected to include an article on autoimmune diseases for which we provided information. Also, utilizing the theme "We Are 50 Million," upcoming public relations activities will promote March 2011 as National Autoimmune Disease Awareness Month for which we are planning an awareness campaign, as well as news releases on AARDA's 2010-2011 Research Grant Recipients. Keep your eyes and ears tuned for the results of our awareness efforts.

     In conjunction with Autoimmune Disease Awareness Month, the National Coalition of Autoimmune Patient Groups (NCAPG) is holding a congressional staff briefing on March 22. AARDA is organizing that briefing, and several of the NCAPG members have joined with the effort and are providing some financial support.

     AARDA members may want to do their own local awareness efforts by taking AARDA brochures to their physicians' offices or posting them on church and business bulletin boards. Contact the AARDA office for brochures. Just think of the awareness achieved if every person receiving this newsletter distributed even five brochures.

     Another March event is the free public forum in New York City which we are cosponsoring with the New York University Hospital for Joint Diseases.
In other areas, we have been working on other issues related to health care reform and FDA reauthorization. We will be providing testimony at a public hearing at the end of March for the Social Security Administration on autoimmune conditions.

     Awareness has not been confined to March, of course. publicity and public relations over the past three months have focused on promoting AARDA's annual appeal campaign "We Are 50 Million." We invested in an ad in Times Square on David Letterman's jumbotron screen which reached millions of people during the holiday season and during the New Year's Eve celebrations in Times Square.

     Additionally, the campaign was promoted via social networking channels; paid search, i.e., Google Adwords; e-mail marketing; and public outreach to patients seeking their personal stories which were featured on aarda.org.
As you will see elsewhere in this newsletter, we continue to fund autoimmune research. Funding from groups such as ours is very important as funding dollars in general are being reduced greatly. We are fortunate that AARDA individual and corporate donors have made our research support possible. In fact, AARDA has surpassed the million dollar mark in total for funding of autoimmune disease research. It is truly heartwarming to realize the extent to which our donors have remained faithful even in these belt-tightening times.

     Thank you for your interest in AARDA's work and your continuing support. And Happy Spring!
Best wishes to you,
Virginia