Every year the Chris Elliott Fund hosts the Brains Matter Awareness Auction & Celebration Luncheon during the month of May as part of National Brain Tumor Awareness Month. This May of 2013 marks the 3rd Annual event and we at CEF are celebrating another successful luncheon and year with our brain cancer and brain tumor advocacy rockstars.

This year’s event CEF honored Kathi Goertzen with CEF’s 2013 Inspiration Award. Keynote speaker David Heyting, brain cancer survivor, patient advocate and CEF board member offered insight into the journey of a brain tumor patient for attendees at the event
. The organization also presented the 2013 Hope Award to Holly Zimmerman as well as to David Heyting.

This year, the event raised over $34,000 for patient services and expansion of the Patient Services Support Center for the Chris Elliott Fund. Another important part of the event is that it brings many brain tumor and brain cancer patients together for one day of celebration and also to recognition to those who have passed away.

In combination with this event and Brain Tumor Awareness Month CEF hopes to bring awareness and educate patients and caregivers about this this disease to help empower other individuals to be advocates for their health care. As part of the event, CEF President and Founder appeared on Seattle KOMO 4 News to offer information about brain cancer and brain tumors. The video can be found on the KOMO news website, who ran it on their news channel.

CEF would like to extend a special thank you to the generous donors who made the 2013 Luncheon Possible including: Media Sponsors KOMO 4, 770 KTTH, KIRO Radio 97.3 FM, 710 AM ESPN Seattle, and MyNorthwest.com; Advocacy & Education Sponsor Genentech; Inspiration Award Sponsor Novocure; Hope Award Sponsor Universal Avionics (Tribute to Reg Chan); General Sponsor Arbor Pharmaceuticals, LLC; Corporate Table Sponsors Herman Serles Almond PLLC, and NuWest; Sign & Print Sponsors Nativis, Mail Post & Copies, HTI; and Dessert Sponsor Delve Analytics.

We also spent the month of May releasing several new education and awareness campaigns. For more information on the work, see the press release here.

Not able to attend this year’s luncheon? You can still donate to this year’s cause online, and sign up for our email newsletters to keep up to date on our news.