About

A Letter from Founder, Ed Newman

I am a cancer survivor.

During my treatment, I met John Ellis and Jason Ginder, two survivors of lymphoma and patients of Dr. Yahalom of Memorial Sloan-Kettering. John Ellis was the founder of the Connecticut Sports Foundation Against Cancer. His foundation was started to help families financially when a member of the family is struck with cancer. Through the Connecticut Sports Foundation Jason Ginder was raising money particularly to fund studies done at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. John and Jason were great inspirations to me. I knew that I wanted to raise money to better cancer treatment giving directly to doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering so they can further improve the treatments that save patients with aggressive diseases like lymphomas.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering has one of the largest and most advanced bone marrow transplantation programs and the doctors we support are some of the international pioneers in making these treatment work. They are now focusing on adding more drugs and more sophisticated radiation technology to improve the chances of patients that failed other treatments to win at the second and likely last round of their struggle against lymphoma. They are also testing the formulas that will be safer and less harmful to the patient in the long run. Any of these changes benefit the patients but unfortunately have no economic value to pharmaceutical companies who traditionally fund research studies and clinical trials.

In order for these doctors to make changes that benefit cancer patients, the funding needs to come from philanthropic people like you and me!

Once I learned about this, I knew that I wanted to help them. The money given goes to support young investigators to collect analyzed data using modern statistical tools and updating databases that contain information on long term issues on quality of life and long term treatment effects.

An example of these efforts from Dr. Yahalom on these issue has just been published in the prestigious Cancer Journal, The Journal of Clinical Oncology, on improving the safety, outcome and quality of life of patients that were salvaged after failure of primary treatment with Memorial Sloan-Kettering programs of high-dose chemo-radiotherapy for Hodgkin Disease and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. These works (among many more) were supported by our foundation.

After Win Boileau passed away the Boileau family introduced me to Dr. David Langer of Lenox Hill Hospital and he and the Boileau family educated me on what great work the Lenox Hill Brain Cancer Center was doing so we agreed to support their great work as well. Brain Cancer is a horrible disease and there is very little options for patients with the lowest rates of survival and this is an area that needs funding to allow for much better treatment.

My wife and I feel very fortunate for my survival and grateful for the work that the doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. With such an opportunity to improve the lives of people needing treatment, we are truly passionate about this cause. But, we need your help. The more money we raise, the more the doctors can do to save and improve lives of people needing treatment. As I and others have grown the Sports Foundation Against Cancer over the past 20 years, we have funded dozens of studies with donations from people like you and me.

We have an exciting day planned. It includes a golf outing, a dinner where we will hear from doctors and survivors and a silent auction with extraordinary items.

We are going to have a great time at the event, but whether or not you can attend, I hope you will consider a gift to the Foundation at this time. You can sign up for event activities and donate on our Website at www.sportsfoundationusa.org.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I look forward to sharing many more good stories with you in the future.

Best wishes,

Ed Newman

Chairman, Sports Foundation Against Cancer

P.S. Please pass on this message, the invitation to the events and the link to our Website www.sportsfoundationusa.org to your friends and colleagues. In as many ways as you can help, thank you for your support

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