Hawken Miller, features writer —

The Hemophilia Federation of America (HFA) and the National Hemophilia Foundation (NHF) jointly launched the “Together Project,” in which the two organizations will work together to address issues affecting the bleeding disorders community. Most of the partnership’s efforts will center on written content creation and visual designs, which…

Football and science seem to be disparate fields of play at first glance, but the nonprofit Uplifting Athletes is finding common ground by leveraging the popularity of college gridiron games to fund research for rare diseases. Its nearly two dozen chapters — representing college football teams across the nation…

The paladin By-Tor from the Order of Light fights to protect others and always chooses life over death, even when it places him in certain danger. In the world of Dungeons and Dragons, he uses his sword and…

As anyone affected by a rare disease knows, treating the illness while trying to go about everyday life is an expensive undertaking.  But exactly how expensive — in terms of direct and indirect costs across rare disease populations — might still come as a surprise: almost…

Many diseases have their own awareness color — breast cancer is pink, muscular dystrophy is green, and AIDS is red, for example — but what’s the significance of pink, green, blue, and purple lights side-by-side? These are the colors most often used to represent Rare Disease Day. This…

Diagnosed with sickle cell disease as a 6-month-old, Tristan Lee has faced a lot of challenges over his 37 years of life. But from a young age, he also learned how to turn those trials into triumphs. At age 9, a stroke due to his disease left him paralyzed…

Leaders in the U.S. rare disease community came together recently for a webinar to present helpful information on how to start a nonprofit and patient registry. They shared about how their respective organizations came to be, as well as the benefits of creating patient registries and how they can help…

It took one year for Dona Krystosek to get a diagnosis for her son, Levi, after he was born. The family received three misdiagnoses of fatal diseases until they found out Levi has Jansen’s metaphyseal chondrodysplasia — an extremely rare form of dwarfism.   “The hardest…

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced the postponement of a rare disease film festival originally slated for May, its organizers set out to find a new way to bring the films to an audience.  Co-founders Daniel DeFabio and Bo Bigelow, who are both fathers of children with…

Dara Riva always had a rule that her 10-year-old son could play video games only once a week. But then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and her perspective changed. Riva’s son, Maximilian, has cystic fibrosis (CF), making him particularly susceptible to COVID-19 and the complications that can arise from it.