Hello all,

On Saturday, October 21, I’m participating in the 37th annual Walk to End HIV to raise funds for Whitman-Walker's amazing programs and I'm hoping you will join my team. Now that we have opened our new building in Southeast, we expect to care for over 15,000 patients east of the river, in addition to the 15,000 we already care for in Northwest - 30,000 patients receiving high-quality healthcare regardless of their ability to pay.  While Whitman-Walker continues to have a special focus on serving the LGBTQ+ community, fewer than half our patients self-identify as LGBTQ+.  But many of them lack access to healthcare and especially now that we are in Southeast, we hope to have a real impact on the health disparities that plague our community, where people in Southeast have a life expectancy years shorter than those in Northwest.  

Additionally, very unusually for a community-based health center, we have received an NIH construction grant to build out a state-of-the-art biomedical research center in our new Southeast facility.  However, we must raise operational funding to undertake the research.  We will work not only on curing HIV but also on industry trials for new treatments and other research projects.  We kicked off our research here in Southeast with a trial of a cancer screening blood test - and are so pleased that we will have a diverse set of research participants, since trials often suffer from a focus only on narrow populations.  Our research has the potential to drive better health outcomes for all of us.

I hope that you will support me in my goal of raising funds for Whitman-Walker's incredible (IMHO :)) work. This is our 50th anniversary year!  I hope to raise $10,000 for this event.  But no pressure!  I appreciate all the support you have already given me as I have undertaken the adventure of being interim CEO of the Whitman-Walker Health System. Thank you, thank you!  I appreciate you!

Warmly,

Cindy