A group of 40 volunteers from Bayada Home Health Care are making a down-home effort to bring a breath of fresh air to Tucsonans next Sunday with "Fight for Air With a Country Flair," a concert to benefit the American Lung Association Southern Arizona Chapter.
The fundraiser is the brainchild of AJ Hughes, the marketing manager of Bayada. She was inspired to combine a passion for country music with support for the American Lung Association when she found that the ALA's annual Fight for Air Walk was rained out in mid-March, causing a $30,000 shortfall in projected donations for the fiscal year.
"I've never produced a concert like this so it was a new experience for me, but it was just something I definitely felt we needed to do to help people suffering from lung disease, especially children and people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease" or COPD, which is also known as emphysema or chronic bronchitis, Hughes said. "We have so many clients who have COPD, which is like drowning when you are not in water."
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Hughes felt that tapping into the robust local country music fan base would be a fun and entertaining way to promote awareness about American Lung Association services.
"Country music has so many loyal followers, and they all have such a giving nature. Personally, I love country music because almost every song can relate to some part of your life.
"Whether you are going through the best part of your life or the lowest point of your life, there is a country music song out there that is poignant at the moment," she said.
ALA Southern Arizona Chapter Executive Director Dominick San Angelo said that statistics about lung disease are, indeed, poignant: More than 21,000 children in Pima County have asthma, and asthma is the No. 1 cause of medical absence from school.
One child dies every other day from asthma in the United States, while lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death for men and women in America and COPD is the third-leading cause of death in Arizona.
The ALA directly targets these concerns, San Angelo said. The ALA Asthma Clinical Research Centers Network is the nation's largest nonprofit network of clinical research centers dedicated to asthma treatment research. It consists of 18 asthma clinical research centers throughout the country, including one at the University of Arizona.
San Angelo said that on average every dollar of research seed money funded by the ALA generates another $34 in funding from other sources.
"If we provide $5,000 in grant money to a new scientist starting his or her career, they are able to raise $170,000 on average from other sources, so this is fundamentally essential to their work," he said. "Recently, our centers determined that a commonly prescribed acid-reflux medication is counter-therapeutic for children with uncontrolled asthma. That is how important this kind of research is to children and families."
All the bands participating in "Fight for Air With a Country Flair" have donated their time and talent, and The Maverick nightclub has donated the venue for the event to funnel as much money as possible directly toward health education.
"The music is going to be fantastic and tickets are only $10 each," Hughes said.
Hughes has embraced the ALA since losing her mother to asbestos-related lung cancer more than 30 years ago. At age 11 she began saving her allowance so she could donate pennies, nickels and dimes to the ALA.
"They made it seem like it was the biggest donation they received, and that has resonated with me throughout my life. I am a mother of four and grandmother of two with one on the way, and if any of them were ever challenged with asthma, the ALA is the first place I would turn," she said.
If You Go
• What: "Fight for Air With a Country Flair" fundraising concert featuring headliner LeeAnne Savage and other local musicians including Andrew Cooper, Neil Russell, Greg Spivey and Jason Curtis.
• When: 4 to 10 p.m. June 24
• Where: The Maverick, 6622 E. Tanque Verde Road
• Cost: $10 per person; must be 21 or older to attend
• Etc.: All proceeds benefit the American Lung Association Southern Arizona Chapter to fund asthma education programs in Tucson schools and provide health education about COPD, lung cancer and other lung-related ailments
• Tickets: Go to http://lungarizona.org/south or call AJ Hughes at 370-9995. You can also buy tickets at Bayada Home Health Care, 7070 N. Oracle Road.
Contact freelance writer Loni Nannini at ninch2@comcast.net