I had hoped to have two major initiatives get off the ground for Worldwide NET Awareness Day on November 10. It increasingly looks like only one of those things will happen simply because there is only so much we can do at one time. I had hoped to create an event at local malls this year called Mall Walking with Jane. It would have taken place in malls either during the time before the stores opened when the malls allow people to use their common space for walking or over the course of the day.

Unfortunately, I hatched the idea too late for the slender resources we currently have to pull that off in the time we had. It looks like the kind of event that will take several months to pull together in the way I want it to happen. And I don’t want anything we do to ever come off as less than professional.

But the second initiative is making great headway. By November 1 we should have available the first stories in a series of articles for newspapers about NET that are aimed at raising awareness of the disease. Yesterday, Phil Devitt spent the day in Boston interviewing a patient at Dana-Farber and people at the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation for two of the stories we have planned. He has been working for weeks on an overview story that covers what NET is and where we are in terms of research and treatment of the disease.

Later today Becky Martins will interview Dr. Richard Warner, the founder of Carcinoid Cancer Foundation–the oldest of the foundations working on this disease–about his work on the disease and how he got involved with this hard to diagnose cancer.

Three pieces are already in the can: one by Katie Dupere on the reason Walking with Jane exists, one by Meg Allen Flanagan on Jane’s life and her impact on her students, and one by me on how NET often masks itself in the symptoms of IBS.  Versions of hose stories are already in use in different locations on this site. I still have an op.ed. piece to write–which I have struggled with for weeks.

All of this will shortly be available on a new page called Press Kit. That addition will require some changes in how the site is set up. The design team is discussing the issues the expansion requires us to resolve.

But we could really use some help getting the word out to newspapers and magazines about the availability of these articles. I have put out the first of a series of press releases advising print and internet news organizations about the package’s availability but have thus far had only a limited response. If you are engaged in the news business–or know people who are–please spread the word.

If we are going to finally beat this disease we are going to need everyone’s help we can get.