DMAF depends on funding from private donations primarily enabled by an annual golf outing, silent auction and dinner hosted by Marie, Manny and Vic Hadfield, the former New York Ranger hockey great that has been a key player in DMAF’s fundraising efforts. Through the continued generosity, kindness and support of our supporters, DMAF has raised close to $1.8M dollars over the last 10 years. If you are interested in lending your support through a private donation to DMAF, please click here.

How DMAF Funding Is Used:

Scientific Research

The proceeds raised allow DMAF to fund domestic and international scientific research projects that are making a difference in a wide range of areas including DBA gene discovery, animal model experimentation, development of cell lines, ribosomal protein function studies, and DBA National Registry efforts to monitor DBA patients.

DBA International Consensus Conference

DMAF also coordinates and funds the Annual DBA International Consensus Conference. This conference has grown over the years from a handful of dedicated DBA scientists to now, over 100 experts including the ever increasing number of dedicated DBA researchers and physicians, as well as, leading scientists from many other complimentary fields and government officials representing the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• The International Conference provides the DBA community and interested parties the opportunity to come together to focus on the state of the science for DBA by providing invaluable updates on DBA research from around the world, information on new advancements, leads on potential new treatments, and opportunities to build collaborations.
• DMAF’s interaction with the international scientific and physician community through this conference has also enabled it to become more directly involved in efforts to improve patient care. Coordination of the international experts in this field has resulted in a Clinical Care Consensus Document offering the latest opinions on how to diagnose and manage the care of patients with DBA. This document has been approved for publication within the British Journal of Hematology and will be on the internet for people to print free of charge. DMAF also continues to pursue the concept of an International Patient Data Registry.

DBA Government Advocacy and Public Awareness Campaign

DMAF also coordinates the DBA Government Advocacy and Public Awareness campaign that works to educate Members of Congress and the federal agencies to understand the value of DBA research. The DBA Advocacy efforts, which were aided early on by a successful grassroots campaign from many DBA families across the country, have led to tremendous Congressional and Federal support that the entire DBA community can be proud of.

• The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has now funded over $25M through the National Heart Lung Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) research grant dedicated to the study of DBA and related bone marrow failure research.
• The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) budget includes nearly $500,000 annually to fund the DBA Public Outreach Program, which has established four DBA Centers across the country.
• The U.S. House of Representatives passed House Resolution 524, the DBA Bill, on October 15, 2007. This resolution recognized the significant value in supporting advanced DBA research and the broad benefits to understanding DBA’s links to other, more prevalent disease groups affecting Americans. H.Res. 524 noted that a primary example of the benefit of DBA research is the recent discovery that the ribosomal deficiency problem in DBA is linked to myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), which has greatly expanded the understanding of DBA and opened up a new, exciting direction to this field of scientific research.