INPCS23 Movie Night
At 37, Brian Wallach was diagnosed with ALS—on the same day he and his wife Sandra brought their youngest daughter home from the hospital.
A broken system offered no hope for a cure.
So Brian and Sandra have set out to forge their own path.
This is a documentary unfolding in realtime as one couple fights for their own future while seeking to build a brighter one for thousands of others.
INPCS is pleased to present a special live screening of the film "No Ordinary Campaign", an inspiring documentary chronicling the ALS journey of Brian Wallach and his wife, Sandra Abrevaya.
This screening will take place during the 2023 INPCS Annual Meeting, on Thursday, September 14th, at 7:30pm (US-Central), in Minneapolis, Minnesota (USA).
A live Q&A session with Brian and Sandra will take place Immediately following the movie screening.
You must be registered for the 2023 INPCS Annual Meeting to attend.
To learn more about the 2023 INPCS Annual Meeting, or to register to attend, please click here.
Brian Wallach was diagnosed with ALS in November 2017. At his diagnosis, he was 37, with two daughters under three. Since then he has become an outspoken, well-known, and impactful patient advocate. He is married to I AM ALS co-founder, Sandra Abrevaya, whom he met on the 2008 Obama campaign. Brian was an avid skier who ran the 400 at Yale. His favorite movie is Big Fish and his favorite band is the National.
In addition to co-founding the nonprofit I AM ALS, Brian was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Illinois from August 2014 to April 2018, and from July 2011 to April 2013, Brian served as Senior Vetting Counsel at the White House in the Obama Administration. Brian received his BA from Yale University and his JD from the Georgetown University Law Center. He has also co-founded Synapticure, a virtual clinic and telehealth company providing personalized, wrap-around care for those living with neurodegenerative diseases.
Sandra Abrevaya is the mom of spunky 5 and 7-year-old girls. She is a former founding CEO in the nonprofit sector and has served in senior roles for the City of Chicago, the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Department of Education, and the White House.
Sandra is married to and a caregiver for Brian Wallach who was diagnosed with ALS, a currently terminal illness, in 2017 when they were 37 years old and had their whole lives before them. After the diagnosis, Sandra co-founded I AM ALS with her husband to drive an impactful advocacy agenda based on community organizing principles. Sandra is also the CEO and co-founder of Synapticure, a national telehealth company serving people living with ALS, PLS and Parkinson's.
Movie Synopsis:
At 37, Brian Wallach was diagnosed with ALS—on the same day he and his wife Sandra brought their second daughter home from the hospital. In an instant, everything changed. They went from being a couple only a few years removed from both working at the White House to not knowing if Brian would live to see his 40th birthday. An otherwise healthy former college athlete, Brian expected to find a system built to help him and Sandra deal with this new reality. Instead, they found a broken and failed system in which doctors told patients to “get their affairs in order and get ready to die,” nonprofits stoked fear among patients in an effort to raise funds for research, and “hope” was a four letter word.
This is the story about what happened next. A story about patients taking control of the fight for their lives, breaking down walls and breaking through to new solutions. A story not only about Brian and Sandra, but about all the friends—new and old—who have joined the fight.
Today, there is no cure for ALS. There are no treatments available to save Brian’s life. As Brian puts it, you have two choices in a situation like this: curl up into a ball or act. Brian and Sandra chose to act. In just a short time they have built a patient-led revolution reminiscent of the HIV fight. In doing so, they are not only showing us how to literally create from scratch a movement that makes impossible dreams possible, but also how to really live, even in the face of incredible odds.
Brian and Sandra’s journey opens our eyes to the reality that our healthcare system is broken for those living with rare or terminal diseases. Changing this reality requires upending a medical and research system that discovered ALS over a 150 years ago but has made no real progress towards either a cure or meaningful treatment. The reality of ALS and other neurological or rare diseases is that they can affect any of us. Despite this reality, we have failed to mobilize as a society to defeat them. Brian and Sandra are fighting to remake this broken system and in doing so reclaim their future.
