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Exciting news was recently shared in the medical community as the Fibromyalgia Care Society of America (FCSA) launched their campaign. As the brainchild of longterm (since 2007) fibromyalgia sufferer Mildred Velez, FCSA has one goal and one goal only: to cure fibromyalgia.
Or at least, bring fibromyalgia to the forefront of medical research in the United States. FCSA’s plan is to introduce new approaches to patient care, provide professional education courses for doctors, create care centers, and host non-clinical services for fibromyalgia sufferers.
Velez has worked tirelessly for several years by collaborating with a team of doctors, social workers, and non-profit professionals to create the Fibromyalgia Care Society of America. They hope to help abolish the stigmas attached to chronic pain illnesses across the board of medicine and science.
On the topic of creating the FCSA, Velez said, “I never set out to start my own organization; I was always interested in helping what was already in place. But over the past few months I took a real close look at what was in place and it occurred to me that there are some very critical things being done for other diseases that is are not being done for fibromyalgia.”
The primary model for FCSA is to utilize three core areas of focus. The first, Centers of Excellence, where state-of-the-art research will take place. The second, a program titled FibroCares, which will work with fibromyalgia patients in a non-clinical setting. And lastly, the most revolutionary will be FCSA’s Empowerment Groups.
These groups will function as a type of traditional support group, but will offer patients specific coping mechanisms for dealing with fibromyalgia, mixed with clinical-based self-care strategies and 12-step-program models. This ingenious and multifaceted model will be the most holistic (whole body and mind) program that the world of fibromyalgia treatment has ever seen.
Things are changing for fibromyalgia sufferers. Not only are resources for patient care expanding, but more and more doctors and community members are finally understanding the disease.
The love and acceptance from the people around us is all that really matters. Mildred Velez and the Fibromyalgia Care Society of America is ready to bring a sense of normalcy back to the lives of patients who are long overdue.
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