After losing her mother to Scleroderma in September of 2009, Project Scleroderma founder, Christy McCaffrey, reached out to patients living with this disease to gain a better understanding of what it was exactly that quickly and aggressively took her mother’s life. Through her interactions with patients, Christy learned more about just how complex this disease is and just how difficult a diagnosis with Scleroderma can be for patients, both physically and emotionally. She saw that there was a severe lack of awareness and that patients living with Scleroderma truly needed to be seen and heard. Patients were eager to share their stories, they simply needed the outlet to do so. She also came to understand that scleroderma research and the advancements necessary to finding a cure were suffering as a result of this lack of awareness.

With all this in mind, Christy was then inspired to create an organization that would focus primarily on finding new and creative ways of raising the global level of awareness of this disease. Project Scleroderma uses documentary style videos and films as a vehicle for awareness, highlighting the stories of those who suffer from the illness and working to continually garner more attention for the cause. Project Scleroderma also creates patient support video series that are intended to help patients feel a greater sense of community and support.