Over the past few years, we have grown so much because of your support. Many of you know that we started out as an event in Indiana. We soon grew to hold annual events in South Texas, San Francisco, North Carolina and had plans to hold events in a few additional states in 2020. By this time, we were already planning how we could provide support beyond our annual events. While we have evolved considerably, there is so much more that we are looking forward to this year and beyond. For this reason, our overarching name is now Generation Patient, with the Health Advocacy Summit as the name of our events. Take a look below at our organizational structure - from our annual virtual event to six virtual community meetings per month to a fellowship program, and more, we are excited to grow our impact together for adolescents and young adults with chronic and rare conditions.

A word about the term 'patient':

We believe that the term patient should not reflect a person solely within the confines of the medical system; but throughout all the systems that the "patient" interacts with - whether that is higher education, work, navigating relationships, the healthcare system, etc. Society, and particularly the medical profession, should shift the understanding of what it means to be a patient, particularly the detrimental impact of institutional ableism. As young adults with various chronic and rare conditions, we have many transitions and our illness is a part of all of the systems we encounter. Given that the majority of our programs and opportunities are outside of the traditional medical system, we hope our name change will help redefine this term with better recognition of illness and its relationship to various systems that we encounter while entering adulthood.

While we are officially now Generation Patient, we will be undergoing this change slowly. Over the next few days, we will be changing our social media handles and making other logistical changes.