Where Does My Money Go?
When you generously give to The JBC PANS & PANDAS Foundation, you can have confidence that 100% of your donation will fund treatment grants and support for children and young adults suffering from PANS and PANDAS.
Why Your Help is Vital to Helping PANS & PANDAS Kids Heal
While awareness surrounding PANS and PANDAS has grown in the past few years, much of the medical community has yet to recognize these illnesses as medical disorders. Countless children with PANS/PANDAS are misdiagnosed with a psychiatric illness or even a behavioral disorder. They are prescribed psychotropic medications, counseling, and other therapies rather than being evaluated and treated for an underlying infection.
Beyond prolonging the struggle of children and families, the lack of a consensus surrounding PANS/PANDAS has resulted in inadequate insurance coverage. Most health insurance plans do not currently cover comprehensive testing and treatment for PANS/PANDAS, forcing families to pay out-of-pocket, rack up credit card debt, or take out loans to heal their child. Far too many children and young adults are hurting unnecessarily because they cannot afford the proper testing and care required to treat these diseases.
That’s Where JBC Grants Come in
The JBC Foundation community continues to advocate for change to get PANS/PANDAS patients the care they require and deserve. In the meantime, our monetary grants alleviate some of the financial burden on families that are suffering.
Currently, JBC is the only non-profit organization on the East Coast that gives money directly to families to help pay for life-changing medical care. Some of our benefactors are well-wishers from the community who have read about our cause and feel moved to help. Others are relatives, friends, teachers, neighbors and foundations who know a family or child affected by PANS or PANDAS and feel personally connected to our mission.
A JBC Grant covers expenses relating to the treatment of PANS and PANDAS, allowing eligible children and young adults to start on a path to real recovery. This includes medication, supplements, doctor visits, lab testing, and alternative practitioners. Should other PANS/PANDAS expenses arise, our grant committee will review these requests on a case-by-case basis. Our grants include an initial award of up to $2,500, with additional funding available up to $5,000.
It truly takes a VILLAGE to get a family through PANS and PANDAS and on the road to healing. Your donation goes directly to those in need. It can really mean the difference between a family continuing to struggle—and life-changing treatment that helps a child reclaim a healthy, happy life.
Meet Abby, a JBC Grant Recipient
The change we saw in our daughter hit us like a tidal wave one day in November of 2018. We had no idea what was happening, and we began searching high and low for reasons explaining this sudden change in our once bright and bubbly 11-year-old. Was it the start of middle school? Was it the shifting of friend groups? There was no explanation that seemed to fit the severity of the emotional and behavioral changes that we were witnessing.
Her health and ability to function continued to rapidly decline, requiring several hospitalizations. We felt hopeless. Almost 8 months later, at an annual physical, Abby’s pediatrician recalled that she had pneumonia two weeks prior to our request for a behavioral consult. I had heard the term PANDAS and began frantically researching. Thankfully her pediatrician was willing to draw some initial labs, where we found elevated antibodies for strep and mycoplasma pneumonia. Abby was immediately put on antibiotics. Things got slightly better, but she was nowhere near back to her old self. We knew we needed to run some more tests, but we had maxed out the knowledge of our pediatrician.
So we went to the Lyme / PANS Treatment Center in Cohasset. There, we were able to run some more diagnostic testing. These tests are not covered by insurance and are extremely expensive. Without the financial assistance of the grant we received from the JBC Foundation, it would not have been possible for us to run these additional lab tests. From these labs, we found elevated levels of mold toxins, active Lyme disease, Bartonella (another tick-borne disease known for causing neurological damage), and gut biome issues, all indicative of a PANS (Pediatric Acute onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome) diagnosis.
Our journey with PANS has been nothing short of horrific and devastating. But because of the testing we were able to do with the JBC Grant money, we became armed with important medical information about the overload of infection antibodies plaguing our daughter’s body and brain. We took the lab results to a world-renowned Lyme neurologist in New York City, and she and a PANS specialist worked together to put Abby on a combination of three different antibiotics and IVIG treatments. I can happily say that today, Abby’s health is dramatically improving, and she is back to school full time after missing more than half of her middle school years. We now have hope for a future for our daughter that we could not see two years ago. The JBC Grant helped us get here, and we couldn’t be more grateful.