This year, 2023, marked the 10-year anniversary of the Rowan Foundation’s inception. For the past 10 years, our work has been focused on helping to decrease the number of lives lost to preventable blood clots. Since day one, our efforts have been orchestrated in memory of Alexandra Rowan. In 2013, Alex lost her life, at the age of just 23, to a blood clot in her lung. Her only known risk factor at that time was hormonal contraception. Our work is inspired daily by her experience, as well as the experiences of all the women and their families who have been impacted by blood clots.
The Rowan Foundation realized several important gains this past year, including impressive growth in website traffic and social media engagement, which are both crucial in helping us raise awareness about women’s health and blood clotting. We expanded our educational resources dramatically in 2023, with an emphasis on contraception decision-making, and our website now also hosts all of our key educational tools in one convenient place.
One of our most exciting accomplishments this year, however, involved you, or members of the clotting community: We were excited to introduce our new Women’s Health & Clotting Quarterly in 2023, featuring the input and experiences of women in our community – women who give voice to the diverse personal experiences and insights that comprise our collective community. This year, we also shared numerous personal stories, and during Blood Clot Awareness Month in March we recognized select community members who have compelling stories to share and who have been key supporters of our work over the years.
Community Connections
We know that our greatest achievements are in the connections we make with you, and we hope that more of you will reach out to connect with us. We would be honored to share your story or collaborate with you to help inform and inspire others about issues involving women’s health and blood clots.
The Rowan Foundation has grown substantially in recent years, dramatically expanding our core educational assets and forging new community connections. Moving forward, our aim is to build further upon this growth. There are so many resources in the community and we believe we have the greatest impact when we work together and lift each other up.
In the upcoming year, in addition to forging new relationships, we will be placing greater emphasis on genetic thrombophilia, and also the emerging role that genetic testing may play in offsetting or reducing the incidence of blood clots and also improving diagnoses when blood clot symptoms do occur.
We also will be developing new resources and tools to help improve dialogue between women and their healthcare providers and, therefore, improve the recognition and successful diagnoses of potentially life-threatening blood clots to help save lives.
As this year soon comes to an end, we want to thank all of you for your support during 2023. We hope that you and your family enjoy a peaceful holiday season and that we have the opportunity as a community to share in a healthy and happy new year together.
