International PBC Day is on the second Sunday of September each year – this year that would be September 8th. The PBCers Organization celebrates all of September as PBC Awareness Month.
In 2018 we began a project for International PBC Day and PBC Awareness month of September. We decorated large Puzzle shapes to show what "our" piece of the PBC puzzle is. PBC is a puzzle because there is not a known cause or cure. We are all different in the way PBC affects us and respond differently (or not at all) to the current treatments. Together, we make up the large puzzle of PBC! #pbcpuzzle was designed to show how all parts of the puzzle – patients, researchers, physicians, pharma, etc. need to work together to solve this puzzle!
We will be using the PBC Puzzle again this year for PBC Awareness and we invite everyone to join us by showing what your piece of the puzzle is.
You can go to pbcers.org/PBC/Puzzle.htm to see a video of the pieces created at our conference and another explaining the concept. There are also puzzle examples that can be downloaded and used to create a digital piece to be posted on social media or printed to create your own decorate puzzle piece that you could then share on social media (not private group pages we need them on public pages for awareness). The possibilities are endless! We can envision local support group meetings, members of clinical trials sites posting, members of pharma teams showing their puzzle pieces using pictures or videos, or something as simple as your company logo on a puzzle piece showing you are part of the #pbcpuzzle. Reach out with any questions or if I can help in any way.
We ask when you share that you use #pbcpuzzle and tag @PBCers in your posts as well as post it to our public PBC Puzzle page on Facebook facebook.com/PBCpuzzle/
Carol Roberts
PBCers Organization