How RPF Founder Kelly Young Won WebMD Health Hero Award
Tanya Tudor worked as a critical care nurse for twenty years, volunteering during national disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. Tanya also loves traveling and visited to each of the contiguous 48 states in the U.S. Although living with Rheumatoid Disease has restricted some of these activities, she often finds ways to help others, especially fellow patients by encouraging them to keep fighting the disease, find a doctor who will listen, and treatments that will help them.
WebMD recently recognized the work of our founder, Kelly Young, in helping people living with Rheumatoid Arthritis / Rheumatoid Autoimmune Disease (RAD). An award of $2500 was donated to the Rheumatoid Patient Foundation (RPF) in her name. The contest was a surprise to Kelly and she was stunned when WebMD described how overwhelming the entries were. Here is the back story…
How Kelly was nominated for the WebMD Health Hero Award
by Tanya Tudor
August 2011 was shaping up to be a real “poor pity me month.” I had reached the point that I realized that Rheumatoid Autoimmune Disease (RAD) had taken from me my defining characteristic, the ability to help others.
This led me to thinking about Kelly Young and everything she has done to help me and thousands of others with this disease. I became very determined to findsome way that I could help. I’m not sure how, but in my random Google searches I found something about health hero and a page for WebMD and their Health Hero Award. As I followed the link and read the requirements, the first person that hit my mind was Kelly!
I also realized there were only a few days left to submit a nomination. I wrote my piece and submitted it to WebMD. And then turned to all the social media I could find, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. I wasn't sure if my submission was adequate to convey just how right Kelly was for this award, so I turned to the thousands of others that have benefited from her work.
Without even knowing it, Kelly had once again helped me by giving me those few days to feel like I was helping someone else. When word came through that Kelly Young had indeed won the Health Hero Award, I was so excited. Not only would her being presented in the magazine spread awareness of all of her hard work and honor her for that hard work, but it would also provide a small monetary donation to the new Rheumatoid Patient Foundation.
