I feel like a proud parent today. As many of you know OCF has many missions, that with the very meager funding we have to work with, we are slowly chipping away at and making positive change in the world by doing. We operate the world's largest single patient support mechanism (this forum) for oral cancer patients, which thanks to the benevolent contributions of time and information from survivors and other patients has helped untold numbers of people, especially when you consider the tens of thousand of lurkers that are logged onto the forum each month.

We have a mission to inform the American public about the disease and provide them with accurate, current and useful information about the disease, its risk factors, and its early signs and symptoms. We do this by just printing our one millionth "What you need to know about oral cancer" brochure which is the defacto waiting room publication, and used at events all across the country by numerous other organizations. Another vehicle to do this (these are only a couple of many) took a big leap this month. We broke our month previous high for hits on our web site of 19 million in one month last month, breaking the 20 million hit mark. The over 2000 page web site, is liked back to by more than 34,000 other sties, from the ACS to the NCI and the CDC.

We are pushing professionals in the dental and medical communities to be more involved in early detection of OC, and in the last two months it has been the dominant subject of both the JADA magazine for dentists, and their counterpart magazine in Canada. There have been more continuing education courses on oral cancer in the last year than in the previous 5 together, more speakers at professional symposiums on oral cancer, most of which OCF has been instrumental in getting on the programs or supporting in their authoring of articles.

Next month, with the help of four doctors from our science advisory board, we will issue the OCF standard of care screening protocol which will finally standardize what doctors are supposed to actually do that can be considered an appropriate and thorough examination for OC. A new OC study at Johns Hopkins will be the first to use it and see that all 22 institutions engaged in a current research project will all be using this standardized protocol, something the ADA hasn't even defined.

Many of you know that we issued grants last year to several researchers of importance around the country, (you can see the press release on this in the press kit part of the web site if you are intersted in who) and I am very proud to announce that another ground breaking paper elucidating more about the relationship between HPV and OC by Maura Gillison at Johns Hopkins, which we were the first contributing funders of, will appear in a major cancer journal (has been accepted by their peer review committee) for publication in the next 4 months entitled Oral HPV infection before and after treatment in HPV16 positive oral cancer patients, will reveal much about what HPV status is like after treatments. This is a question that many of us that came here from this etiology worry about. I cannot reveal the content of this paper until it is published. But it adds one more component to our understanding of HPV and Oral Cancer, and is a building block for the next work with doctor Gillison that we will be sponsoring this summer. As many of you already know, she has been a member of OCF's science advisory board since around 2002, and is one of OCF's most important relationships as the rates of HPV positive cancer skyrocket in the US. Her work, some of which is financially co-sponsored by OCF, with other organizations like the NCI, is completly changing the way that practicing dentist and doctors look at the disease. I cannot tell you what it feels like when OCF's contributions produce useful, tangible, new understandings of this viral etiology, and to have our name associated with this work. It is not some esoteric look at OC, it is an understanding that can help us in the realm of prevention in the future, as we identify transfer mechanisms, demographics of who is newly at risk, and the specific regions of the anatomy from which these tumor will arise.

I feel very proud that our small, underfunded organization is having real impact in the world, and now after awards from the NIH, the NIDCR, NYU, The Chicago Dental Society, and others for excellence in public service, our organization has helped one of the world's most important HPV researchers reveal additional information that will potentially effect treatments and vaccines for people already infected. It is another important step in our understanding of the disease. And yes, even I have personally been recognized by many organizations and in coutless articles in magazines and news mediums. While this is not about ego, when others whom you respect recognize your work as meaningful, it feels like I an at the right place, at the right time, doing what I was meant to do. I am humbled to be the first non doctor to be given a membership in the American Academy of Oral Medicine, of which there are less than 300 qualifying doctors in the US. This is not about ego, or legacy, but the recognition means that we are doing something right, that is worthy of notice. OCF has become the meaningful effort, with milestones accomplished, that is on a path to changing things that are obstacles to reducing the death rate.

OCF is more work than I ever expected, (certainly more than when I getting PAID to work!) but the recognition of our accomplishments is not going unnoticed, and I am supercharged to continue given our progress. I want you all to know, that those of you that help here on the forum, support the foundation through financial donations - no matter how small, even do small things like use our Amazon link on the site when you buy at this web giant, are all part of making this possible. Those of you that have purchased a monthly automatic donation in our store, I am particularly proud to be associated with. It means that your belief in OCF's mission and ability to affect change in the world is something that you truly believe in, and is not just a passing gesture. I wish to thank those of you who give back in many ways for making many of our accomplishments possible. You are a core component of our success, in what I hope is an organization that continues many decades into the future, surviving beyond my contributions until this disease is brought under control.