Welcome!

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to CSF, the Chiari & Syringomyelia Foundation, Inc.  CSF was established in October 2007 by a group of passionate and dedicated people who are committed to aggressively pursuing a cure for Chiari malformations and syringomyelia.

Although the name of our organization is new, you will recognize many familiar names and faces of those who make up our Board of Directors, our Board of Trustees, and our professional staff.  These people are hard working and devoted to our mission, and have been instrumental in past events that have raised both money for funding research, and awareness in the medical community and the general public.

You will also recognize many familiar names on our distinguished Medical Research Board, who have committed their leadership, counsel and support for CSF.  Our Medical Research Board now consists of leaders in neurosurgery, neurology, neuroradiology, genetics, veterinary medicine, and engineering, and we are delighted to inform you that this board continues to grow as we add additional distinguished members of the medical community.

We have an exciting year ahead of us!  We recently completed community awareness and education programs in Denver and Cleveland, and we are planning to start similar programs in Washington, New York, Texas and Illinois this year.    We are pleased to announce that we held our first Board of Directors strategic planning meeting in early January.  In March, our Bobby Jones Society will hold its first meeting in Dallas, and our Medical Research Board will meet in Chicago in April.  Our first annual CSF Charity Ball will be held on April 5 on Staten Island in New York, and our first CSF Race for the Cure will be held at the Arlington Park Racetrack in Arlington Heights, Illinois on September 7.  I encourage you to join us at both events, as well as other events that we are planning.

In addition, one of our goals is to establish a research endowment fund, which will enable CSF to fund research on a yearly basis for long term clinical and scientific studies.  We will have an announcement out to you in 2008 about this important and groundbreaking initiative.  We also hope to begin to establish CSF chapters in 2008, and aspire to having chapters throughout the United States within a few years.

I'd like to personally thank those of you who have shown your support for CSF in our early stages, and I encourage everyone to get involved, in one way or another, with our journey towards finding a cure.  We're in this together!

Paul J. Farrell
Chairman and Founding Member