January 21, 2021 — To all our friends in the CRC and cancer communities:
We would like to announce an important milestone in our organization’s history. Erika Hanson Brown, COLONTOWN’s founding Mayor and Co-Founder of the PALTOWN Development Foundation, is moving forward in her quest for increased patient empowerment in healthcare through new ventures in 2021. It is important to all of us to recognize Erika’s efforts through her own story as we are all better for her amazing efforts.
PALTOWN is a result of the ten years that she spend building and managing the COLONTOWN community. She has a well-known reputation as “the leading patient community builder,” the founder and creator of “that patient powerhouse.” She is viewed by us and the cancer community at large as an innovator and a passionate champion for the patient voice. She is one of the only people who is recognized as the “patient” who put “centric” into the much-sought after healthcare industry goal: to be “patient-centric.” The communities that she builds are known to be “for patients, by patients.” In addition, the communities supported by PALTOWN have been recognized as having some of the most engaged and best educated patients with regards to their specific disease. Due to her, patients are now empowered with the skills and techniques to improve and demand improvement of their own treatments through the PALTOWN Empowered Patient Leaders training. These concepts would’ve been unthinkable not too long ago. Nevertheless, she persisted…
We want to extend our deepest gratitude to Erika for her over 10 years of tireless work and leadership in building this unique, patient-centered community that now empowers 5,000+ CRC patients and caregivers and is a model for modern healthcare and patient education.
In creating COLONTOWN and the PALTOWN Development Foundation, the impact she has made on cancer care and patients’ lives through these efforts is truly extraordinary and immeasurable. We look forward to continuing to support our mutual efforts, on behalf of patients, toward improving and saving lives that are impacted by these terrible diseases.
We love and thank you for your vision, Erika.
To Life!
— The PALTOWN Board of Directors