I will never forget the look on my daughter’s face when, hooked up to chemotherapy, she screamed for me to help her breathe. In paralyzing terror, her eyes pleaded with me to make it better. I sank into a puddle of powerlessness, she is allergic to the medicine we are counting on to save her life. 

Carrying your child through cancer treatments is unimaginable. But, the day Abby had an anaphylactic reaction to a critical drug, pegaspargase (PEG), our fight felt impossible.

After anaphylaxis, Abby could not take PEG again. That’s when I learned the devastating truth: there are life saving drug shortages right here in the United States. Hundreds of them, in fact, and your child may not have access to the very drugs that could increase their chance of surviving.

Our only “plan B” was a drug, Erwinaze, that was on a national shortage (and had been for years). The average wait list for a life-saving drug is 15 months. A patient fighting for their life does not have 15 months. How could there possibly be no access to an established medical technology that would save a child’s life?

I would not rest until my daughter had her life-saving treatment, despite her doctors telling me it would be a waste of energy to try. 

Backed by hundreds of Angels, after thousands of calls to hospitals, pharmacies, lawmakers, pharmaceutical companies, and many miracles along the way, we found her Erwinaze in 10 days.

In the blackness of panic and chaos, hope shined a light. And my little fighter had a chance. It was truly a miracle. Then my daughter faced two more drug shortages during her treatment. 

We found those, too, but questions plagued me: What about every other parent and child? How could this be the standard of care? Why were the necessary amounts of these drugs not being made? Who could fix this?

I knew this fight was not over for me. That I must be the change I needed to see in the world. This became my mission: to help solve the drug shortage crisis. Thus, I founded Angels for Change. 

Our work was based on two truths: 1. Life-saving treatments exist. 2. Patients MUST have equal access to the drugs that can save their lives.

In the beginning, my priority was advocacy: to help any patient facing any drug shortage find the medicine they needed. This is still my top priority, and I stop everything when I am contacted by a family or hospital in need. We have been honored to help families and hospital systems, in the US and abroad, navigate shortages to find hundreds of treatments of more than two dozen medicines on shortage. Some of their experiences can be found in “Shortage Stories”. 

While I celebrated helping individual families navigate the drug supply chain, I knew I was only dealing with the symptom of the real problem—a broken system. So, Angels for Change took a leadership role in advocating for proactive solutions rather than reactive actions in the fight to end drug shortages. 

We boldly and innovatively work to end drug shortages before they impact patients using three principles; Transparency, Redundancy, and Connectivity. 

• Using our principle of Connectivity, we convened our TakeOn Series and SummitONE, the first and only national conference for supply chain members hosted by a patient advocacy organization dedicated to ending drug shortages. Then we worked with Champions to launch the End Drug Shortages Alliance (EDSA), a group of stakeholders from across the industry who have committed to end drug shortages.

• Using our principle of Transparency, we work to gain visibility into the factors that lead to shortages and the patient harm caused by them launching our Change Maker Institute. 

• Using our principle of Redundancy, we launched Project PROTECT sheltering patients from the impact of essential medicine shortages through proactively increasing capacity and supply of shortage vulnerable medicines. In 2022 alone, PROTECT was accessed more than half a million life-saving times for patients across the US. The success of this project led us to scale protect 7 times larger in 2023 securing more medicines for all patients in need.

Since becoming Chief Change Maker in the fall of 2019, we have made a real and lasting impact toward ending drug shortages. As the only charitable, patient advocacy organization with a mission to end drug shortages we are driven by a single principle: what I would do for Abby, is what should be done for every patient. 

I will be the change I want to see in the world. Become a Change Maker with me. Join the Movement!