Allan Appel Photo
“We are not standing by to wait for a magic bullet for a cure. We’re going after education and prevention and we are going to bend that curve.”
The curve is the one that shows, nationally, a 17 percent rise in those diagnosed with the painful and still incureable genetic disease, sickle cell anemia, which largely afflicts African-Americans.
The above words of conviction belong to James Rawlings (pictured above at center with Mayor Toni Harp), chairman of the board of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of Southern Connecticut. He uttered the words Friday afternoon as he led an emotional and optimistic ribbon-cutting for “Michelle’s House,” the northeast’s first education, prevention, and community-support center dedicated to offering a way out of the shadows for suffers of the often unreported and misdiagnosed disease.
Click here to read more about the three-year struggle to create Michelle’s House. Named after former First Lady Michelle Obama, the center operates out of an old, abandoned, now spiffy, Victorian located at 1389 Chapel St., across the street from the St. Raphael campus of Yale New Haven Hospital. The organization rents the house from the hospital for one dollar a year, after having invested more than $200,000 in an historically sensitive gut-rehab.
Among the most moving speakers Friday was Frank Tavares (pictured), a young board member who has suffered from the disease his whole life. He described going through years of sometimes excruciating pain. He missed school trips and participation in sports. His disease was a major factor in the poverty in which he grew up. Now, having just graduated from Southern Connecticut State, he’s bound for medical school to become a doctor and to take care of sickle cell patients.
“The house is historic, but what’s really historical is its new residents. Today we are making history,” said Charles Collier, another board member of the association. “Michelle’s House will allow for an invisible community to be visible.” Here’s where to get more info and to make all important donations to the sustainability of the new center.