May 26, 2024 • 15 mins
Original Air Date: May 26, 2024
Cheryl Hamaty is the MS Society Senior Director of MS walks in NJ and Metro NY.
Cheryl Hamaty is the MS Society Senior Director of MS walks in NJ and Metro NY.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio,Conversations about issues that matter. Here's your
host, three time Gracie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein. I want to introduce
you to Cheryl Hammity. She livesin Middletown. She is a senior development
manager of walk MS, New JerseyMetro and we are focusing this morning on
(00:25):
World MS Day, which is comingup May thirtieth. And first of all,
tell me about your work with NationalMS Society and thank you for joining
us this morning. Thank you somuch for having me, Shelley. So,
I work, like you said,I'm the senior development manager of WAKAMAS.
(00:45):
What that really means is I overseethe ten walks that we have in
the New Jersey Metros. So Icover Mercer County and North in those ten
walks. Currently, we have aportfolio of about one point five million dollar,
so I oversee that portfolio and makingsure that we hit our goals and
(01:06):
budgets and all of that stuff.I am lucky that I get to essentially
just build relationships all day. Iget to talk to people and learn them
and get to know them, andI get to be a part of their
journey. It's really amazing. SoI get to talk to people and see
what ways I can help them,how we can engage them, what it
(01:26):
is that they specifically need, sendthem whatever resources or programs that they need,
and really just get to make adifference in their lives. So everyone
has heard of MS, but I'mnot sure that people fully understand what it
is because there are some people whoare pretty well functioning on a day to
(01:49):
day basis, and then others whoare not. Is it a progressive illness
that will progressively get worse or justfill us in here, Cheryl, Well,
it's it's really difficult because it's notpredictive. It literally impacts everybody differently,
but it also impacts everybody differently fromday to day. So somebody might
(02:12):
have a great day one day andthe next day they are numb and they
can't walk, and so studying itand learning it is really difficult in that
way. And there's four different typesof MS also, so we do know
that we have made so much progress. So the we've been around for over
(02:35):
seventy five years and the last fiveyears of that National MS Society, we've
seen more progress in research and findingit sure than we did the seventy years
prior to that, So I dobelieve that that we're getting closer, but
it's really difficult to track and youknow, determine what's going to happen to
somebody. It often makes me wonder, meeting somebody who is diagnosed thirty forty
(03:00):
years ago, how different their lifewould be if they had been diagnosed now,
when we have disease modifying therapies onthe market and all these drugs and
things in place to really stop people'sprogression. You know, I've talked to
people who have X amount of lesions. Let's say they have fourteen lesions,
but in monitoring with their doctors,as long as there's no new lesions,
(03:23):
that's amazing and that's great. Thenthey're stopping that progression in its tracks.
So no new lesions. But itreally affects people so differently. How widespread
is it? What percentage of thepopulation would you say is afflicted by MS.
We know there's about one million peoplein the US, but we think
(03:45):
it's more because there's definitely underserved populationswhere people don't haven't been diagnosed, may
not have an MS neurologist nearby,so they're just going to a primary or
regular neurologist for their achievement. So, yeah, we don't know the exact
numbers, but around one million peoplein the US. What are the signs
(04:09):
the first signs of MS. Onceagain, it's it's different for everybody.
Optic naratus is the presenting sign inthirty percent of people who are living with
MS, so the first thing thatthey experience is loss of vision. But
some people go numbing their legs.I know many people who just wake up
(04:30):
one day and they cannot walk.And they're young and healthy and active,
and all of a sudden they're paralyzed. Are there any unifying factors that would
make someone more prone to MS thananother person? No, there are prevalent
So there are some prevalence studies.For example, the northeast, the area
(04:55):
where we live, that it seemsto be a heavier prevalence, but we
also are more heavily populated, sothat could make sense. There is a
definite link to military service and MS. So we actually have a Veterans and
MS program that that we run.Yeah, tell me about that program.
(05:15):
How do you serve that community?It's virtual. I wish that I had
information on that right in front ofme in this moment. But is it
sort of a support program? Yeah, it's informative, and yes it's it's
(05:42):
informative supportive resources. How we partnerwith the VAS and the Apartment of Veterans
Affairs. But yeah, I actuallyknow somebody who is living with a MESS
and her military service. They wereable to directly correlate her serving in the
(06:04):
military to her multiple sclerosis. Dothey have any idea? Why is it
things that they're exposed to? It? Is it Gulf War related? I
honestly don't know enough about it tobe able to speak to that, and
I apologize. Do symptoms does itvery in terms of when you experience the
(06:29):
first symptoms? For example, aremost people diagnosed as adults or children?
Well, there is an influx ofchildren being diagnosed. I've definitely met a
lot of people who can say theywere diagnosed in their twenties or thirties,
but their MS symptoms started when theywere kids or when they were teenagers.
(06:49):
And a lot of these people saylike they weren't heard, they were ignored,
you know, it's just it's growingpains, or it's this, it's
that. But now I think withmore exposure of the disease, and we
also do have a new to pediatricsand MS and as a society we've been
(07:11):
exploring this area more also. SoI do think that now kids are being
able to be diagnosed sooner rather thanlater, but I think overall people are
typically able to be diagnosed sooner thanlater. Now I'm speaking with Cheryl Hammity.
She is the senior Development manager ofWalk MS, New Jersey Metro and
(07:35):
we are coming up on World MSDay May thirtieth. Tell us how the
National MS Society serves the MS community. Yeah, I would love to.
So. There are multiple ways thatwe serve the MS community. One is
research. We're the largest private funderof MS research in the world. We've
(08:01):
in the last year we awarded twentynine new fellowships and early career grants,
adding nine point six million dollars innew multi year commitments to the MS Research
Workforce portfolio. We also funded ninenew projects focusing on understanding the role of
viruses in MS. We also haveso many resources available to those who are
(08:24):
living with MS. I had justmentioned our new to Pediatric MS, which
is a virtual experience bringing together preteensand teens and their parents to connect with
one another. We have our newto MS program that runs virtually once a
month, and then we will alsotake programs like our new to MS program
or LATINX Experience Summit or Black MSSummit, which are virtual nationwide programs,
(08:50):
and we'll take those and tailor themto a local community. So, for
example, here in New Jersey,in the beginning of May, we're want
we're running a new to MS inperson program, So we're going to take
all of the learnings from our virtualone and then tailor it to our local
New Jersey community. We have alocal neurologist doctor seeing presenting, and we
(09:13):
have a local person who's living withMS presenting and just bringing all of these
things to a local, smaller point. We also have our MS navigators,
which are trained social workers who areavailable to the whole MS community. So
if someone's newly diagnosed or newly ina device and can't pay for a ramp
(09:39):
to be installed into their house,they can call in a MUS navigator and
we can help fund that for them. Or if they just need to find
a doctor or an occupational therapist nearby, our MS navigators are there to help
them. What's the best way forpeople to reach out to you, to
me or to you an MS navigator, National MS, the National MS Society.
(10:01):
They can go to NATIONALMS Society dotorg. And we actually have a
brand new website that we just launchedlast week, so it's really pretty I
invite everybody to check it out andthere we can see all of our resources,
programs, ways to be involved.How did you get involved? I
(10:24):
got really lucky. I'll tell thestory. I came from hospitality. I
had a very long career in thehospitality world and was hellant no restaurants,
bars, restaurants is how I started, and then moved on up to management.
I was in Corporate America as acatering manager with a high profile client,
(10:52):
and then with the organization where Iwas promoted to a regional marketing manager
in January of twenty twenty. Andthen along comes COVID and I was furloughed
and then laid off in July oftwenty twenty. At the time, I
was seven months pregnant, so Irode out unemployment as long as I could
(11:13):
to stay home with my daughter.And then when unemployment ran out and I
needed to go back to the workforce, I knew I didn't want to go
back to what I was doing before. I wanted something that fueled me and
kind of like made my soul feellike I was making a difference in the
world. So I started looking atnonprofits and researching nonprofits and was fortunate enough
(11:37):
to find my position here. Well, I was actually started as a development
specialist a little over two years ago, and then last year I was promoted
twice and here I am. Okay, but you looked at a bunch of
nonprofits, so obviously something attracted youto the National MS Society. What was
it? I have to say itwas a mix of like the vision and
(12:03):
the mission and what I read onlike class store, about what people were
saying about like employees had said aboutworking here. It just seemed like on
both sides, it was a reallygood organization for what it does and its
mission and what it does for theMS community, but also how it takes
care of its employees and workforce.So you obviously reached out to the National
(12:28):
MS Society first, how but yourexpertise was from hospitality, So how was
that received? I mean that seemslike kind of a long shot. Well,
if you break I also have along background of volunteering personally. So
I've spent my life. My dadwas an ELK, I became an ELK.
(12:50):
I just volunteered forever. And withmy hospitality kind of like event planning
background, it was like a reallygood way to marry all of my life
skills. Being in hospitality industry itis, and especially as a contractor with
the Fortune five hundred company that Iwas working for, I had to build
(13:11):
relationships. I had to build relationshipswith the people who maintained the building,
the groundskeepers and my staff, theother managers. So I was really able
to just take all of these skillsthat I had learned and different parts of
my life and marry them together.And then I got to learn about MS
(13:33):
and the MS society also. DidMS touch you it all personally or was
it? Gosh? Not previously?Not not previously, But from being here
it feels very personal to me andwell, because I do get to meet
all of these really great people whoare so strong and resilient. I'm essentially
(13:56):
a stranger. I call somebody up. I know Shelley Sunstein registered for WALK.
Let me give her a call andget to know her and see what
brings her here. You don't knowme. I'm just a person calling from
the MS Society, and people openup to me, and I get to
learn really deep intimate parts of theirlife, and now I get to be
a part of their journey. It'sreally it feels so personal to me,
(14:18):
you know. And and last yearI experienced somebody who I had gotten close
who passed away from you got COVIDand just never recovered and complications of MS,
and after that it seems even morepersonal. Yeah. A couple people
I know who survived MS for thelongest time COVID got them. Yeah.
(14:39):
So yeah, I've also met Oh, go ahead, I've also met people
who got COVID and that brought ontheir MS symptoms where their doctors were able
to say, like, you wouldhave had this eventually, but getting COVID
brought this on sooner. And again, how can people reach the National MS
Society. You can reach us atthe National MS Nationalmssociety dot org. Okay,
(15:07):
thank you so much, Cheryl Hammitty. You've been listening to Sunsteen sessions
on iHeartRadio, a production of NewYork's classic rock Q one O four point three
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio,Conversations about issues that matter. Here's your
host, three time Gracie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein. I want to introduce
you to Cheryl Hammity. She livesin Middletown. She is a senior development
manager of walk MS, New JerseyMetro and we are focusing this morning on
(00:25):
World MS Day, which is comingup May thirtieth. And first of all,
tell me about your work with NationalMS Society and thank you for joining
us this morning. Thank you somuch for having me, Shelley. So,
I work, like you said,I'm the senior development manager of WAKAMAS.
(00:45):
What that really means is I overseethe ten walks that we have in
the New Jersey Metros. So Icover Mercer County and North in those ten
walks. Currently, we have aportfolio of about one point five million dollar,
so I oversee that portfolio and makingsure that we hit our goals and
(01:06):
budgets and all of that stuff.I am lucky that I get to essentially
just build relationships all day. Iget to talk to people and learn them
and get to know them, andI get to be a part of their
journey. It's really amazing. SoI get to talk to people and see
what ways I can help them,how we can engage them, what it
(01:26):
is that they specifically need, sendthem whatever resources or programs that they need,
and really just get to make adifference in their lives. So everyone
has heard of MS, but I'mnot sure that people fully understand what it
is because there are some people whoare pretty well functioning on a day to
(01:49):
day basis, and then others whoare not. Is it a progressive illness
that will progressively get worse or justfill us in here, Cheryl, Well,
it's it's really difficult because it's notpredictive. It literally impacts everybody differently,
but it also impacts everybody differently fromday to day. So somebody might
(02:12):
have a great day one day andthe next day they are numb and they
can't walk, and so studying itand learning it is really difficult in that
way. And there's four different typesof MS also, so we do know
that we have made so much progress. So the we've been around for over
(02:35):
seventy five years and the last fiveyears of that National MS Society, we've
seen more progress in research and findingit sure than we did the seventy years
prior to that, So I dobelieve that that we're getting closer, but
it's really difficult to track and youknow, determine what's going to happen to
somebody. It often makes me wonder, meeting somebody who is diagnosed thirty forty
(03:00):
years ago, how different their lifewould be if they had been diagnosed now,
when we have disease modifying therapies onthe market and all these drugs and
things in place to really stop people'sprogression. You know, I've talked to
people who have X amount of lesions. Let's say they have fourteen lesions,
but in monitoring with their doctors,as long as there's no new lesions,
(03:23):
that's amazing and that's great. Thenthey're stopping that progression in its tracks.
So no new lesions. But itreally affects people so differently. How widespread
is it? What percentage of thepopulation would you say is afflicted by MS.
We know there's about one million peoplein the US, but we think
(03:45):
it's more because there's definitely underserved populationswhere people don't haven't been diagnosed, may
not have an MS neurologist nearby,so they're just going to a primary or
regular neurologist for their achievement. So, yeah, we don't know the exact
numbers, but around one million peoplein the US. What are the signs
(04:09):
the first signs of MS. Onceagain, it's it's different for everybody.
Optic naratus is the presenting sign inthirty percent of people who are living with
MS, so the first thing thatthey experience is loss of vision. But
some people go numbing their legs.I know many people who just wake up
(04:30):
one day and they cannot walk.And they're young and healthy and active,
and all of a sudden they're paralyzed. Are there any unifying factors that would
make someone more prone to MS thananother person? No, there are prevalent
So there are some prevalence studies.For example, the northeast, the area
(04:55):
where we live, that it seemsto be a heavier prevalence, but we
also are more heavily populated, sothat could make sense. There is a
definite link to military service and MS. So we actually have a Veterans and
MS program that that we run.Yeah, tell me about that program.
(05:15):
How do you serve that community?It's virtual. I wish that I had
information on that right in front ofme in this moment. But is it
sort of a support program? Yeah, it's informative, and yes it's it's
(05:42):
informative supportive resources. How we partnerwith the VAS and the Apartment of Veterans
Affairs. But yeah, I actuallyknow somebody who is living with a MESS
and her military service. They wereable to directly correlate her serving in the
(06:04):
military to her multiple sclerosis. Dothey have any idea? Why is it
things that they're exposed to? It? Is it Gulf War related? I
honestly don't know enough about it tobe able to speak to that, and
I apologize. Do symptoms does itvery in terms of when you experience the
(06:29):
first symptoms? For example, aremost people diagnosed as adults or children?
Well, there is an influx ofchildren being diagnosed. I've definitely met a
lot of people who can say theywere diagnosed in their twenties or thirties,
but their MS symptoms started when theywere kids or when they were teenagers.
(06:49):
And a lot of these people saylike they weren't heard, they were ignored,
you know, it's just it's growingpains, or it's this, it's
that. But now I think withmore exposure of the disease, and we
also do have a new to pediatricsand MS and as a society we've been
(07:11):
exploring this area more also. SoI do think that now kids are being
able to be diagnosed sooner rather thanlater, but I think overall people are
typically able to be diagnosed sooner thanlater. Now I'm speaking with Cheryl Hammity.
She is the senior Development manager ofWalk MS, New Jersey Metro and
(07:35):
we are coming up on World MSDay May thirtieth. Tell us how the
National MS Society serves the MS community. Yeah, I would love to.
So. There are multiple ways thatwe serve the MS community. One is
research. We're the largest private funderof MS research in the world. We've
(08:01):
in the last year we awarded twentynine new fellowships and early career grants,
adding nine point six million dollars innew multi year commitments to the MS Research
Workforce portfolio. We also funded ninenew projects focusing on understanding the role of
viruses in MS. We also haveso many resources available to those who are
(08:24):
living with MS. I had justmentioned our new to Pediatric MS, which
is a virtual experience bringing together preteensand teens and their parents to connect with
one another. We have our newto MS program that runs virtually once a
month, and then we will alsotake programs like our new to MS program
or LATINX Experience Summit or Black MSSummit, which are virtual nationwide programs,
(08:50):
and we'll take those and tailor themto a local community. So, for
example, here in New Jersey,in the beginning of May, we're want
we're running a new to MS inperson program, So we're going to take
all of the learnings from our virtualone and then tailor it to our local
New Jersey community. We have alocal neurologist doctor seeing presenting, and we
(09:13):
have a local person who's living withMS presenting and just bringing all of these
things to a local, smaller point. We also have our MS navigators,
which are trained social workers who areavailable to the whole MS community. So
if someone's newly diagnosed or newly ina device and can't pay for a ramp
(09:39):
to be installed into their house,they can call in a MUS navigator and
we can help fund that for them. Or if they just need to find
a doctor or an occupational therapist nearby, our MS navigators are there to help
them. What's the best way forpeople to reach out to you, to
me or to you an MS navigator, National MS, the National MS Society.
(10:01):
They can go to NATIONALMS Society dotorg. And we actually have a
brand new website that we just launchedlast week, so it's really pretty I
invite everybody to check it out andthere we can see all of our resources,
programs, ways to be involved.How did you get involved? I
(10:24):
got really lucky. I'll tell thestory. I came from hospitality. I
had a very long career in thehospitality world and was hellant no restaurants,
bars, restaurants is how I started, and then moved on up to management.
I was in Corporate America as acatering manager with a high profile client,
(10:52):
and then with the organization where Iwas promoted to a regional marketing manager
in January of twenty twenty. Andthen along comes COVID and I was furloughed
and then laid off in July oftwenty twenty. At the time, I
was seven months pregnant, so Irode out unemployment as long as I could
(11:13):
to stay home with my daughter.And then when unemployment ran out and I
needed to go back to the workforce, I knew I didn't want to go
back to what I was doing before. I wanted something that fueled me and
kind of like made my soul feellike I was making a difference in the
world. So I started looking atnonprofits and researching nonprofits and was fortunate enough
(11:37):
to find my position here. Well, I was actually started as a development
specialist a little over two years ago, and then last year I was promoted
twice and here I am. Okay, but you looked at a bunch of
nonprofits, so obviously something attracted youto the National MS Society. What was
it? I have to say itwas a mix of like the vision and
(12:03):
the mission and what I read onlike class store, about what people were
saying about like employees had said aboutworking here. It just seemed like on
both sides, it was a reallygood organization for what it does and its
mission and what it does for theMS community, but also how it takes
care of its employees and workforce.So you obviously reached out to the National
(12:28):
MS Society first, how but yourexpertise was from hospitality, So how was
that received? I mean that seemslike kind of a long shot. Well,
if you break I also have along background of volunteering personally. So
I've spent my life. My dadwas an ELK, I became an ELK.
(12:50):
I just volunteered forever. And withmy hospitality kind of like event planning
background, it was like a reallygood way to marry all of my life
skills. Being in hospitality industry itis, and especially as a contractor with
the Fortune five hundred company that Iwas working for, I had to build
(13:11):
relationships. I had to build relationshipswith the people who maintained the building,
the groundskeepers and my staff, theother managers. So I was really able
to just take all of these skillsthat I had learned and different parts of
my life and marry them together.And then I got to learn about MS
(13:33):
and the MS society also. DidMS touch you it all personally or was
it? Gosh? Not previously?Not not previously, But from being here
it feels very personal to me andwell, because I do get to meet
all of these really great people whoare so strong and resilient. I'm essentially
(13:56):
a stranger. I call somebody up. I know Shelley Sunstein registered for WALK.
Let me give her a call andget to know her and see what
brings her here. You don't knowme. I'm just a person calling from
the MS Society, and people openup to me, and I get to
learn really deep intimate parts of theirlife, and now I get to be
a part of their journey. It'sreally it feels so personal to me,
(14:18):
you know. And and last yearI experienced somebody who I had gotten close
who passed away from you got COVIDand just never recovered and complications of MS,
and after that it seems even morepersonal. Yeah. A couple people
I know who survived MS for thelongest time COVID got them. Yeah.
(14:39):
So yeah, I've also met Oh, go ahead, I've also met people
who got COVID and that brought ontheir MS symptoms where their doctors were able
to say, like, you wouldhave had this eventually, but getting COVID
brought this on sooner. And again, how can people reach the National MS
Society. You can reach us atthe National MS Nationalmssociety dot org. Okay,
(15:07):
thank you so much, Cheryl Hammitty. You've been listening to Sunsteen sessions
on iHeartRadio, a production of NewYork's classic rock Q one O four point three
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