Gratitude Day - celebrating the partnership between families, scientists and clinical professionals to advance treatments for Huntington’s disease.
Please join Factor-H & the international HD community in celebrating the partnership between families, health professionals and scientists to advance treatments for Huntington's disease.
A message from Factor-H:
We’re inviting you to join us in the worldwide social media campaign, “Huntington’s Gratitude Day.” It’s coming up on Monday, March 23rd.
The Gratitude is for the partnership between families, scientists and allied health professionals in the great quest for effective treatments for HD. You, your staff members and allies are all partners.
Gratitude Day was born four years ago from the collaboration of Factor-H staff in South America and volunteers around the world. It continues to grow, because our partnership is too important to take for granted. It’s responsible for all we’ve achieved to date and is the foundation for the future. That why we do it grassroots, without sponsors, virally on social media. We are truly One on HD Gratitude Day!
The first milestone in our partnership was the US/Venezuela Huntington’s Disease Collaborative Research Group. Nancy Wexler’s team travelled to the families living in extreme poverty in the villages along Lake Maracaibo, villages which still have the highest prevalence of HD in the world. They willingly gave samples of their blood, skin and more, in the hope that they could, as Marjorie Guthrie used to say, “do something about HD.”
That partnership and those contributions, later with those of other families and scientists, led to the discovery of the HD gene in 1993, March 23rd. That’s why we do it on that anniversary every year.
Today, we’re all partners. Some of us work at home, others work in labs, clinics, offices, at a desk, a lab bench or operating an MRI machine. One may be walking their own HD road or caring for a loved one; a healthcare professional, association employee, or a volunteer in a research study or organizing an event. Perhaps they’re a participant in a clinical trial, brain donation, Enroll-HD, a walk, a banquet, a survey, a support group or have jumped from an airplane to raise funds. Gratitude Day is not to thank each other, rather it’s a day to recognize, appreciate and call attention to our partnership, its achievements that have brought us this far, and the certainty that it’s the foundation upon which our future advances and discoveries a will be built.
Today, our partners in those Venezuelan villages remain living with HD in extreme poverty under very vulnerable conditions. They remain partners, too, celebrating Gratitude Day in their villages with candlelight vigils for loved ones lost to HD, and a Kids’ Lab Day which virtually connects them with, this year, Joe Cheer’s University of Maryland Medical School neuroscience lab, inspiring them to see themselves in science.
Join H Factor on Sunday, March 22, 2026 for a live streaming event from Venezuela by clicking on the link below & registering
- Venezuela: 12:00 PM
- Los Angeles, USA: 9:00 AM
- Mexico: 11:00 AM
- New York, USA, Colombia, Peru : 12:00 PM
- Argentina, Brazil, Chile: 2:00 PM
- UK: 4:00 PM
- Europe: 5:00 PM
We invite you to join us this year and participate by taking pictures of yourself, your central or regional office staff, your chapters, ambassadors, or families doing “H-Hands”. You might gather around a lab bench, an office, lab, or clinic together and take a picture of your team all doing H-Hands. We ask you to distribute this as widely as possible within your agency.
“H-Hands” is our hand sign which symbolizes family/scientist partnership and Gratitude Day. It’s the traditional “heart hands” sign, with both index fingers extended upwards, forming a rough “H,” which stands for Huntington’s, Humanity and Hope. They are the pillars of both our work at Factor-H and everything within the partnership in the quest for effective treatments.
Post your Gratitude Day pictures on IG #hdgratitudeday
The symbol for Gratitude Day
