This was our third annual joint dinner meeting of the Board of Directors of The Esophageal Cancer Education Foundation ( ECEF) and the Foundation’s Medical Advisory Committee.

At this meeting we recognized several visitors who have made a profound impact on ECEF during 2011;

• Emily Sobut decided to run the Chicago marathon in October of 2011 in memory of her Dad who she had lost to esophageal cancer. She decided to give the donations from her sponsors to ECEF. For the event she raised almost $6,000 that went to ECEF’s Grant research projects that will lead to an early detection of this disease.
• Janice & Rob MacPherson who decided to utilize our Family Awareness Program where they sent letters to all of their family, friends and business associates and through their efforts ECEF received over $5,000 in donations to help our grant commitments.

We introduced at this meeting, two new Board members in Kimberly Guilfoyle and Scudder Fowler who joined our Board in 2011. We also presented Dr. David Cooke from UC Davis in California who joined our Medical Advisory Committee this year as well.

We also recognized Annbeth Katz, a Board member for some time, that has continuously conducted fund raising events in memory of her Husband Gerry. She has raised over $20,000 in bringing awareness to this disease.

Overall it has been a growing year for ECEF. We have made grants for 2012 of $80,000 and so far $30,000 for 2013 all focused on finding early detection approaches for this disease. As additional donations are received a significant portion of them will go to our research account and enable us to support projects that will lead to an early detection of this disease.

We have captured some of the pictures from this event below: