MS Foundation Launches New Website and Redesigns Focus Magazine

The Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, has launched a new website to make access to information and services easier, and a newly designed MS Focus magazine.

MS Focus magazine is the foundation’s publication dedicated to common challenges, solutions, and stories of the multiple sclerosis (MS) community. The new MS Focus website includes some new programs that are available online for the first time, such as the Emergency Assistance Program to help MS patients keep their homes if rent or utilities fall behind; or the Health Care Assistance Grant, to help those who are uninsured afford specialized MS care.

In addition, the new website makes it easier to navigate and find information about grants and programs as well as education and support services.

The foundation used the launch of the new MS Focus to release new videos highlighting people whom the organization has helped. One of these people is tennis player Eric Pierce, who was diagnosed with MS at age 32. Like many others, Pierce took the diagnosis as devastating news, and was forced to learn how to cope with his new condition under a completely new set of circumstances.

Then Pierce learned about MS Focus’s wheelchair tennis program.

“I felt like my world opened up, that the MS diagnosis was not the end of my life, it actually was almost the beginning of a new chapter,” Pierce said in a news release provided by MS Focus to Multiple Sclerosis News Today.

Within the wheelchair tennis program, Pierce found a new community of people who shared his challenges and who inspired him to remember what he could do rather than thinking of all the things he couldn’t.

To buy his new wheelchair, Pierce also received help from a Foundation’s Assistive Technology grant, which is meant to cover devices and aids for daily life.

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, the MS Foundation will also host a Bourbon and Blues black tie gala on Dec. 3 at the Ritz-Carlton in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Cocktail hour gents underway at 6:30 p.m. and dinner and dancing will begin at 8 p.m. The event will include a bourbon bar, whiskey tasting, and silent auction.

The gala will feature musician and songwriter David Osmond, an MS patient and the lead singer of the group Osmonds 2nd Generation, and Sheli Muniz, an anchor with a South Florida NBC affiliate. Dr. Ben Thrower, a well-known MS neurologist and senior advisor for the MS Foundation, will be the gala’s honorary chair.