Living, Learning, Thriving
— Ralph Yaniz
Ralph has served as the executive director of the Florida Society of Clinical Oncology Foundation and the Berwyn Cicero Council on Aging, helping to establish the organization and begin serving the community. He was also an AARP regional vice president for a decade and, prior to that, the Illinois State Director for four years.
He holds BS and MA degrees in psychology from Loyola University of Chicago and worked as a licensed clinical professional counselor in Illinois for three decades. He also holds an MBA degree from Regis University in Denver, Colorado. Ralph has served on numerous boards for nonprofit organizations and in 2018 founded the LGMD2L Foundation to help look for treatments and cures for his form of muscular dystrophy.
A Day on the Hill: Using Our Voices to Lobby Lawmakers
Columnist’s Note: Dear reader, this will be my final column at Muscular Dystrophy News. The past 15 months have been wonderful, but I have decided to take time away from writing to work on a variety of things, including…
Read more
Ralph Yaniz -- Living, Learning, Thriving
Looking Backward but Living Life Forward With MD
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards,” said philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. He came up with an existential masterpiece. In a dozen words, Kierkegaard captured what we all struggle with in finding meaning in…
Medicare’s Role for People with Disabilities
On May 1, I became eligible for Medicare. This is one of those milestones in life. I was able to access this benefit a few years early because of my muscular dystrophy. I am now on Social…
Let’s Aim to Achieve True Global Accessibility
On May 21, the world celebrated its ninth Global Accessibility Awareness Day, but accessibility awareness hasn’t yet risen to its deserved level of interest. The awareness day website shares a great picture of this initiative’s potential scale: there…
Why Self-monitoring Our Functioning Levels Is Important
The muscular dystrophy world is ever-evolving. I began to have symptoms of muscle loss and weakness in 2006. Science had not yet discovered my form of the illness, limb-girdle muscular dystrophy subtype 2L (LGMD2L). My physician, a member…
The Impossibility of Putting a Value on a Life
Author’s note: The COVID-19 crisis has already lasted several months. The reality is that we don’t know how this will go. But as a community, my opinion is that we need to be ready. We need to be knowledgeable.
Living, Learning, Thriving When We Need It Most
None of us have lived through something like what we are going through today. Some have attempted to equate it with other historical events. But there is a uniqueness to this pandemic. As far as I’m concerned, these comparisons…
The Muscular Dystrophy Community Counts on Accessibility Improvements
I feel strange not writing about the pandemic crisis in this column, but we’re already bombarded with information about it, and it appears we will deal with these issues for a while. So, I will be back in two…
One Year Later: Catch Me if You Can
March 1 was my one-year anniversary with Bionews Services, the publisher of Muscular Dystrophy News. Defining a period in this manner allows me to see how far I’ve come in the past year. My columns have focused on…
On Rare Disease Day, Let’s Dare to Be Rare
In the coming days, a great deal of focus will be placed on Rare Disease Day, which is Feb. 29. And for good reason. Approximately 7,000 rare diseases affect up to 30 million Americans. That’s almost…
Addressing the Funding Crisis for Social Security
For those of you who follow my column, I have some good news: Sammy Eikahldit is back. My alter ego, Sammy, first appeared in my column on true accessibility for all. He returned a couple months later when…
