The Pulmonary Hypertension Association won a silver award from Association Trends, an organization for nonprofit associations. The Trendy awards recognize nonprofit organizations’ outstanding communications and marketing efforts.

PHA received an award its Winter 2020 issue of Pathlight magazine, which launched our 30th anniversary celebrations. Pathlight, published quarterly, is an exclusive benefit of PHA membership.

The issue includes stories of the association’s early days, the journeys of long-time survivors and advances in PH research, as a well as a tribute to founder Pat Paton, who died in July 2020.

The 30th anniversary launch issue includes:

PH Through the Years
The cover story includes first-person accounts from patients Gwendolyn Brown, Alex Flipse and Diane Ramirez, who recount their journeys from diagnosis in the 1980s and 1990s to present day.

30 Years of PHA
A timeline of PHA’s achievements over 30 years runs below the cover story along the bottom of center spread and the following four pages. We recreated it online.

Physician Perspective: Evolution of PH Care
Ivan Robbins, M.D., of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, explains how PH treatment and research have evolved over the course of his career.

Flolan at 25: First PH Treatment Offered Second Chance at Life
When PHA began, there was no dedicated treatment for PH. Physicians prescribed vasodilators, blood pressure medication and other drugs that worked on arteries throughout the whole body, rather than arteries in just the lungs. For many patients, a lung transplant was their only hope. Since then, research advancement has led to 15 FDA-approved PH targeted PH treatments. In this story, patients Jeanette Morrill of Maine and JoAnn Volpe of Connecticut describe how the first treatment for PH offered them a second chance at life. Murali Chakinala, M.D, chair of PHA’s Scientific Leadership Council says the lifesaving drug “provided the first real hope that PH patients had.”

Family Affair: 30 Years of Volunteering
Terry and Tom McGraw are among the families who have lived with PH for many years – in their case, decades. In the early 1990s, when Terry was diagnosed, little information was available about PH, and the McGraws didn’t find the fledgling PHA for about five years. Initially, they got involved to find answers and eventually became volunteers and fundraisers.

Beating the Odds: Living Life to the Fullest
Donna Head, 59, of Alabama, relates how she has found love, lives life to the fullest and continually moves forward since first noticing PH symptoms in 1988.

Pat Paton: A Visionary for Patients
Friends and family of PHA founder Pat Paton share memories of Pat in this tribute article, reproduced in our 2020 Annual Report. Pat, described as a “fighter and warrior” lived more than 30 years longer than her initial six-month to two-year prognosis. Her sister and fellow PHA founder Judy Simpson, along with longtime PHA leaders, describe Pat’s passion and purpose: her patient-focused work.

Behind the Biomarkers: Searching for Clues Within PH Classifications
In this article, PHA looks to the future about a study that could upend current PH classifications based on cause. One of the researchers, Jane Leopold, M.D., explains how the study aims to identify biomarkers to improve PH diagnosis and treatment.