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Howie Presents Check to Arthritis Foundation on Behalf of DLF
Backstreet Boy Howie Dorough, a.k.a. Howie D, and his sister Angie Herring, visited the Arthritis Foundation National Office on September 17, 2002, to present a check for $165,000 dedicated to lupus research. After the band member's sister, Caroline Dorough-Cochran, died of lupus-related complications in 1998, he and his family created the Dorough Lupus Foundation in her honor. Dorough was somber as he remembered his sister, who was just 37 when she died after living with lupus for 15 years. The mother of two children died of pulmonary hypertension, a lupus-related complication. "I'm learning every day about lupus and trying to educate others," said the 29-year-old Dorough. "I want to use my celebrity status to get the word out about this disease. The Backstreet Boys get a chance to meet teenagers out there. Sometimes one will come to me and say, 'I had lupus, but didn't tell anyone. When I heard you talking about it, I felt okay talking about it.' The teens help me get the word out to other kids and their parents." The Dorough Lupus Foundation, located in Palm Bay, Fla., is an international not-for-profit organization that prides itself on putting money back into the countries that donate. Recent gifts were made to researchers in Puerto Rico and Argentina. Angie Herring, executive director and vice president of the Dorough Lupus Foundation, worked with the Arthritis Foundation to fund three lupus research studies. "It was great to find a place [like the Arthritis Foundation] who has it all put together and has a system to evaluate the quality of the research," said Herring. Ms. Herring had help choosing one research project to fund from an 11-year-old Wisconsin boy with lupus who raised $19,000 in an independent fund-raising walk. From a list of research studies provided by the Arthritis Foundation, he and his family selected one that would most likely help him down the road. Debbie McCoy, Group Vice President of Research Administration for the Arthritis Foundation, says this gift will go a long way to help people with lupus. "It will fund three researchers that are looking into the mechanisms that cause lupus. Once we find out the cause, we can better treat lupus and eventually find a cure," said McCoy. "It's the dedication of people like Howie Dorough and his family to find answers to a disease that has touched them personally that furthers our ability to fund the research that is necessary to find those answers." "People don't know that lupus affects more people than AIDS," says Dorough. He hopes that he can help change that. More news...
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