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Joe Epifanio is Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Man of Year

By Carol Glassman

06/22/2005 - After an exciting eight weeks of fund-raising, Joe Epifanio, broker and president of Stock Realty, a division of Stock Development, was named Man of the Year 2005 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Epifanio and his team raised over $42,000.

Krista Corrado of Marco Island raised over $24,000 and was named Woman of the Year 2005.

At the Grand Finale Dinner and Auction held at the Naples Hilton and Towers earlier this month, ABC anchor Sharon Gregory announced the winners. Together with Erica Lolli, Charles Bentley and Craig Price, Epifanio and Corrado raised a total of over $113,000 to help cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma. Candidates were judged solely on their ability to generate funds. Mike Newell, who withdrew from the competition, continued to raise funds and said, "It's more important to raise money to find a cure than to get the title."

The 18-year-old Bentley, a recent graduate of St. John Neumann High School was represented by his father at the event, as he was on his way to South Africa serving as International Key Club President.

Epifanio thanked his 'harem' of fund-raisers, modestly stating they had done all the work while he was being recognized. He promised to participate next year as well.

Corrado, who said she was speechless and had not expected to win, thanked her campaign manager Coral Aiken-Miller and her mother Trecy Tekus for their support.

Director of the Naples Branch the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Elaine Mayrides welcomed guests and explained the annual event, sponsored by N Magazine and Stock Development of Naples, is a friendly competition by local business professionals and residents in the Marco Island/Naples/Bonita Beach area to raise money to find a cure for blood cancers.

Justine Drum, 7, and Alex Kicklighter, 8, are Girl and Boy of the Year for the society. In 2003, Justine was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia; she has been in remission since March 2003, but was unable to attend the event. In October 2002, Alex was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. He has completed treatment and is currently in remission.

An Unfair Chance at Life for Minority Patients in Need of a Lifesaving Stem-Cell Transplant

LINCOLN PARK, N.J., Dec. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- After being told her chances were "slim to none," Pia Awal found a bone-marrow donor to save her life. Awal, 29, a South Asian educator from the Dalton School in New York, relapsed with AML leukemia after having beaten the disease two years earlier.

Now, having celebrated her one-year transplant anniversary this Thanksgiving, her plight has inspired numerous communities to educate and recruit donors from the South Asian and minority communities into the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP -- the registry of bone marrow donors in the U.S.).

"Patients should no longer be discriminated against because of the
genetics associated with their ethnic race," says Awal, "especially minority communities who are the least represented by the NMDP registry." According to findings from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the NMDP registry of donors is heavily weighed to favor a match for Caucasian patients rather than minorities.

"From our experiences, we realized that the leadership at the NMDP has
done very little in outreach or to even understand the cultural complexities involved in communicating the importance of becoming a bone marrow and stem cell donor in the South Asian community," mentioned Tim Dutta, who became Awal's husband this summer.

"Even the Office of Patient Advocacy (OPA) and the Chief Operating Officer at the NMDP told me that the chances of finding a match for Pia were slim to none, 'just spend whatever time you have left with her.'"
Having no one to turn to, Dutta (with family, friends, and complete
strangers) started an awareness campaign called Matchpia.org.

Pia's cause attracted national media attention and the Matchpia.org
campaign became the largest campaign for bone marrow awareness in the U.S. Soon celebrities joined the campaign to elevate the severe lack of South Asian donors, creating four public service announcements (PSAs).

Among them are Parminder Nagra from NBC's "ER," Ravi Kapoor from NBC's "Crossing Jordan," Kal Penn from "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle," and Manu Narayan and the cast of the Broadway musical "Bombay Dreams." The Ad Council accepted these four PSAs as part of their "Endorsed Campaign" this year.

In October 2004, an identical donor match was found for Awal, and she had a transplant at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. "Our cause has never ended. We had 11 patients in our campaign find matches in the last year and many more to come as we have recruited over 24,000 donors, in 251 cities, during 334 donor drives to date," commented Dutta.

"Not only did we find that the NMDP does not aggressively recruit minority donors, but they have put up major obstacles that prevent Matchpia from becoming an official donor recruitment group," commented Hemant Wadhwani, President of the Asian American Political Coalition, "preventing them to receive government funding for their extensive efforts in supporting the community."

"It has been over ten years since the NMDP has added any new donor
recruitment groups to increase minority recruitment. During the same period, the population of Indian Americans has more than doubled according to the census report," said Atul Khanna from the Association of Indians in America.

Matchpia.org has also contacted members of the NMDP Reauthorization
Committee (Senators who approve funding for NMDP), to investigate the current discriminatory practices to minorities by the NMDP.
For more information, log onto: http://www.matchpia.org or call
877-206-8800.

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