“You got any jobs at Rare Patient Voice?” Kirk called out of the blue about a year ago.
“Well, no, but let’s talk.” Kirk is an MS patient on our panel, and he had moved from Maryland to Colorado Springs to relax and enjoy the western lifestyle. He was winding down a career of 33 years as a federal contractor. We were exhibiting at a Lennox Gastaut Syndrome patient conference in Denver a few weeks later, so Kirk decided to travel down to Denver to see Ben, our Sr. Project Manager who was managing our table. Ben gave a positive report, and Kirk liked what he saw. In fact, he took part in recruiting patients and caregivers and decided he not only enjoyed it, he was good at it.
Kirk joined the team as head of our Patient Advocacy Team and he proceeded to represent us at Rocky Mountain area walks, educational forums, and conferences, ranging from the Jingle Run (careful, pens can freeze when it is 20 degrees) to the Liver Walk to the Parkinson’s International Conference. He set up a table at his gym to recruit the Silver Sneakers. He explains that he is a patient and does surveys and interviews, and they can, too. He found so many events he hired other part-timers in Colorado.
Now he’s helped us hire a Patient Advocate Team across the country – in Texas, Florida, California, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Maryland. With more to come! That means we can be at many more patient events across the country, recruiting patients and caregivers. We have over 100 events on the calendar for this year. And that means we’ll have more of the patients you need for your studies!
I am amazed that a patient with MS has so much energy. He has 7 “Disability Baby Steps” he follows, including, “Be your own advocate,” “Do not be intimidated,” and “Fight the darned thing as best you can.” “Improvise, Adapt, Overcome.” “Ask for help and accept it!”
Kirk will be back in Maryland this month, his daughter is graduating from Towson University. We’re having a cookout with the team and we’ll finally get a chance to meet in person! What a great addition Kirk has been to Rare Patient Voice!
As always, for the most up-to-date list of our US patient panels and counts, see: https://rarepatientvoice.com/for-biopharma-and-market-researchers/. This weekend we were at the Fabry Support & Information Group annual conference, so we’ve added to our Fabry panel!
