I met Amanda Haddock, the founder of Dragon Master Initiative leaving a Run Disney race before Covid. Her story resonated with me and I started running for Team Fired Up! She founded DMI to honor her son, who died at 18 years of age from a brain tumor. David told his family that he wanted them to keep helping other kids with cancer, no matter what happened to him. 

Amanda took what she learned while David was sick and used that information to start helping researchers. At first through fundraising, but ultimately through the formation of Dragon Master Initiative that could help focus more specifically on the work she saw as paramount: sharing data so that more researchers could work on finding cures. The researchers said they needed better quality data and more of it, so that is what DMI focused on. It turns out, artificial initelligence (AI) needs the same things, so a couple of years ago when people started looking for datasets to use with AI, all of that data was ready to be put to use. 

Dragon Master's been on the ground working with doctors and researchers, and we've seen literally years shaved off of the research process. We've also seen patients prognoses improve... but not nearly enough. Lives are being extended by months, but we want years. We want kids to have a chance to grow up... get jobs... get married... all the things that David and so many others are missing out on. 

And while we are improving things for kids, we are also improving things for adults. The data sharing methodologies that are becoming more commonplace for pediatrics are getting the attention of folks on the adult side. We are poised to help put these same kinds of tools to work for adults with cancer, and for people with other types of rare diseases as well. 

One of the major ways Dragon Master has funded these projects is through their race program with runDisney. I have found my Ohana running then and I am excited for another season of running all the races with them. This will include Dopey with Amanda and hoping to make Springtime Surprise a McCants family affair for the 10k.