About the Myeloma Crowd

About the Myeloma Crowd

The MYELOMA CROWD is a division of the HealthTree Foundation, a patient-driven, 501(c)3 non-profit organization that empowers patients with rare diseases at each step of their disease journey – from diagnosis, through education, care and on to a cure.

The Myeloma Crowd provides four areas of support:

Educate and Support Myeloma Patients and Caregivers

We share patient-friendly myeloma information on www.myelomacrowd.org, including myeloma news, life with myeloma stories, myeloma clinical trials and other topic-based categories. Our Myeloma Crowd Community and Myeloma Crowd Round Table programs host live patient meetings and seminars, especially for relapsed and high-risk patients.

Support Research Driven by Patient Needs

We connect patients with top researchers in the field to explore gaps in current research funding. We then select specific projects that solve the most urgently needed answers to pressing treatment questions. Myeloma Crowd Research Initiative projects were carefully selected by both an expert Scientific Advisory Board and Patient Advisory Board and were targeted toward the most promising progress toward a cure.

Use Data to Solve Patient and Research Problems

For rare diseases like multiple myeloma, the secret to a cure may be found in large data sets of wholistic patient data. Our HealthTree Cure Hub data portal offers immediate help for patients searching for disease navigation tools. This anonymized and aggregated data is shared with myeloma researchers as an extremely important and efficient way to accelerate research.

Nurture Communities

Myeloma patients, like all cancer patients, need emotional support. We provide a number of ways to help patients connect to get advice and support. The Myeloma Coach program facilitates one-on-one connections between patients and caregivers to help them benefit from each other’s experiences. The Myeloma Crowd Community program is a responsive, expanding online support group chapter program that links people with common interests including African Americans, caregivers, specific therapies, geography, nutrition, fitness and more.

About our Founder

When Jenny Ahlstrom was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2010, she anxiously searched for treatments and research for a cure. She noticed gaps in solutions for patients both to navigate multiple myeloma treatment and to help speed a cure.

Through her experience in systems engineering and marketing, as well as her husband Paul’s experience in entrepreneurship, Jenny saw an opportunity to empower patients to take action toward accelerating cures for rare diseases.

Jenny, in conjunction with a talented team, created a series of programs to support patients including a news website in partient-friendly language, live and online educational meetings with experts, a Myeloma Coach program, a "university" about myeloma, a fitness challenge app, an online myeloma specialist directory and other support services.

Then, the team built tools for patients to contribute to their own cure. by sharing their myeloma stories. The HealthTree Cure Hub tool is unique to any cancer and enables patients to do more to push a cure forward for their own disease.

Jenny is a wife and mother of 6.

Donations and Contact Information

The Myeloma Crowd is a division of the HealthTree Foundation and is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit, tax ID 45-5354811. For donations, please donate online to the MCRI project here or mail checks to:

Myeloma Crowd / HealthTree Foundation

PO Box 1286

Draper, UT 84020

Please send questions or comments to support@healthtree.org