by Timothy Rutt
Several months ago, we shared our journey with our son Jacob. Jake has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, and through most of 2012 we were traveling to and from UC-Davis Medical Center in Sacramento weekly while he underwent a clinical trial of a new drug.
Jake's team at the Neuromuscular Research Center shared our article with the public relations folks at the Medical Center. It's kind of ironic that while his team and its work is recognized around the world, they're not that well known within the medical school, so they thought Jacob's story would draw some attention to the good work that they do.
The public relations staff agreed that a piece about the team's research, featuring one of the boys in the trial, would be a good idea. They decided to profile Jake for several reasons -- not only that he got there first, but his team cares about him very much -- and they know that his sister Rosie tends to get most of the attention. Now, it was his turn to shine.
We were interviewed by Nora Mealy, a freelance writer working for the PR team. During our last clinic visit in January, Senior Public Information Officer Charles Casey conducted a video interview and shot some footage of Jake going through his paces.
We think it's a great piece. Here's the full press release with video that UC-Davis released, and here's an article in Science Daily and ScienceBlog that was spun off from that, as well as a feature in the Davis Enterprise.
