A year in Review

2009 has been a wonderfully eventful year for G-PACT and we would like to heartily thank our volunteers for contributing to the progress we have made in generating awareness. With your help we hope to make 2010 even better!

Because of the outstanding generosity and hard work from our supporters, we have accomplished the following in the past year:

- Traveled to Washington, D.C. for the Digestive Diseases National Coalition to speak to Congress on behalf of health care, and on behalf of GI health care, specifically gastroparesis and chronic intestinal
pseudo-obstruction

- Attended Digestive Diseases Week in Chicago, IL, the premier Gastrointestinal conference of the year in which we had an information booth in the exhibition hall and had the opportunity to speak with physicians, other medical professionals, and pharmaceutical companies.

- Saw two of our PAL volunteers attend and exhibit at the Oley Foundation conference. There, G-PACT had the chance to meet many of our YahooGroup list members and speak to gastroparesis and chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction "consumers" who are on home tube feeding and/or home TPN

- Through the PAL program, we've spoken to many GPers and CIPers who need advice on dealing with GP and CIP, who need to find a GI motility specialist, or just need to talk to someone in the same situation

- Continued and seen the growth of our very active online support group thrpugh yahoogroups, reaching over 3,000 members

- Increased Awareness for Gastroparesis and Chronic Intestinal Psuedo-Obstruction through groups, causes, and fan pages on Facebook

- Implemented a support group that meets in the Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina area, and also one that has met in the Louisville, KY area

- Lastly, five members of G-PACT were recently asked by the FDA to work with them to provide a patient's perspective on what endpoints (measures of clinical benefit/symptom relief) are important to patients with gastroparesis in order to help them begin the development of a new drug study. In addition, we've been invited by the FDA to provide a G-PACT volunteer to be a patient advocate and speak on our behalf at various FDA events throughout the year. This is a fairly recent collaboration so more detailed information is not available at this time, but we provide updates as we receive them.

Current Newsletter Home