Global SDS Awareness Day and Action Week
In 2020, the SDS Alliance reached out to all the international SDS patient organizations to discuss the idea of creating an annual Global SDS Awareness event, proposing a time in spring or fall to avoid the busy winter holiday and summer vacation seasons. Our colleagues at SDS UK proposed late April as the time to coincide with Dr. Shwachman's birthday. All organizations that responded - including SDS UK, SDS Netherlands, and SDS Foundation (US) - supported this concept and timing, and so Global SDS Awareness Week was born.
Global SDS Awareness Day and Action Week is about coming together and raising awareness as a united global patient community.
Over the years, the event has not reached its full potential, so we set out to reconsider the date. We polled the international patient community for a new date/frame preference. You voted and we listened!
We are excited to announce that based on your feedback, the new date(s) are:
Global SDS Awareness Day is November 7th
and leading up to it,
Global SDS ACTION Week is November 1-7th
Why this new date?
Dr. Shwachman was a prominent gastroenterologist in Boston in the 1960s and developed deep expertise in caring for Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patients and "atypical" CF patients. This was before SDS was recognized as a distinct disorder, and many patients were categorized as "atypical CF." Drs. Shwachman and Diamond, as well as Dr. Bodian, were instrumental in defining Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome. A landmark publication in the journal Pediatrics in 1964, entitled "The Syndrome of Pancreatic Insufficiency and Bone Marrow Dysfunction" was published by Drs. Shwachman and Diamond in November 1964. It is due to this publication that the disease received its name, "Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome". About 40 years later, Dr. Johanna Rommens and her team at SickKids in Toronto, Canada, identified the main gene responsible for SDS. The gene (and corresponding protein) was named SBDS for Shwachman-Bodian-Diamond Syndrome to acknowledge Dr. Bodian's contribution to the field. Coincidentally, the SBDS gene happens to be located on section 11 or Chromosome 7, giving a nod to the date of 11.7 or November 7.
Purpose
It is our hope that more and more organizations and families will participate over time so that this campaign can grow and reach more families, medical providers, and researchers. We have reached out to all international SDS patient groups to invite them.
Raising awareness can save lives. Any diagnosis made sooner lessens the burden and suffering of the diagnostic odyssey, and life-saving interventions can begin sooner. The SDS community can grow to support more targeted research, accelerating the pace toward therapies and cures.
How to participate
Both patient advocacy groups AND individual patients and families are invited to host events in their communities, be it a bake sale, gala, golf tournament, walk, or any event that works for you and your community. Let us know if we can help in any way! We would love to post your events below and help spread the word.
If you have questions about any particular event or campaign, please reach out to the hosting organization or family directly. Donations to any of the participating SDS organizations are always welcome and appreciated. Visit their respective websites for details.
If you are an SDS patient or family looking for peer-to-peer support or local support organizations, please check out the list on the SDS Alliance website, here. General information about SDS for patients and families can be found here.
New T-shirt Designs Now Live!
Click on the design to order.
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Multiple colors and styles are available, including t-shirts, hoodies, and tank tops.
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International shipping is available.
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If you would like to have them printed locally in your country or community, email us at connect@sdsalliance.org and we will be happy to share the design file!
SDS Story Series
Huge thanks to all the SDS families from around the world for sharing their stories!
The stories are available on the SDS Alliance social media channels:
To raise awareness about SDS as part of the Global SDS Awareness Week in 2021, the SDS Alliance is launching a series of SDS Stories on all it's website, Facebook, and Twitter. We are looking for stories from around the world, the good, the bad, and the ugly :). We want to raise awareness that SDS manifests itself and impacts families in a wide variety of ways, so that more patients can be diagnosed sooner and benefit from community support and better treatments. We also want to show the world that the SDS community is strong and worthy of investment into new therapies and cures. Join us by sharing YOUR story.
Visit our Patient Stories page, contact the SDS Alliance on Facebook or email us at connect@SDSAlliance.org.