Club Information
Welcome to the Rotary Club of Homer-Kachemak Bay!  Celebrating Over 38 Years Serving Homer and the World
Homer-Kachemak Bay

Four Way Test: True, Fair, Goodwill & Beneficial to All

We meet In Person
Thursdays at 12:00 PM
Best Western Bidarka Inn
575 Sterling Hwy
PO Box 377
Homer, AK 99603
United States of America
Currently meetings are being held both "in person" and by Zoom.

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Hear Gregory Rockson speak at the 2023 Rotary International Convention in Melbourne.

Growing up in Ghana, Gregory Rockson always figured he’d become a doctor. At least, that’s what his parents expected.  

“There’s this African thing,” he says, “where every family wants at least one of their children to be a medical doctor.” 

The youngest of five, he believed that medicine was his calling. But in college, he embarked on a global and academic adventure, supported in part by a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, that revealed a different path — one where he would make a bigger impact than a single doctor ever could. 

His college adventure began in perhaps the most unlikely of places for an 18-year-old from West Africa: Fulton, Missouri, population 12,000. 

His sister had encouraged him to attend college abroad and offered to pay for it. At the time, Rockson was going through a Winston Churchill phase, and the British prime minister had given a famous speech about the Iron Curtain in Fulton on the campus of Westminster College, where there’s now a museum in his honor. “There was all this history and excitement about history in one place,” says Rockson. He enrolled in 2009, expecting to go the pre-med route. 

As part of the core curriculum, he took an early U.S. history course and loved it. “I was the best student in the class, which was very weird for a Ghanaian,” he says with a laugh. It changed everything. With the encouragement of his professors and his adviser, Carolyn Perry, Rockson realized he did not want to become a doctor, which would mean spending another decade in school. Instead, he switched his major to political science and pursued every opportunity he could find: He served as a legislative intern for the New York State Assembly, participated in a Public Policy and International Affairs fellowship at Princeton University, completed an internship at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., and interned at a think tank in San Francisco.

Gregory Rockson co-founded mPharma to improve the medicine supply chain in Africa.

Photograph by Andrew Esiebo

Between those programs, he came across another opportunity, the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship. He applied through the Rotary Club of Fulton and was soon bound for Denmark, where he would attend the University of Copenhagen, hosted by the Rotary Club of Copenhagen International. There, he organized an initiative called Six Days of Peace in reference to the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors in 1967. The initiative, which included a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian diplomats, garnered so much attention that Rockson was selected to join the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Community and invited to speak at the organization’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was laying the groundwork for his career.   

When Rockson graduated from Westminster in 2012, his mind was on fire. The U.S. — and the San Francisco Bay Area, where he’d spent time working — was in the middle of a tech revolution, and he was eager to use his newfound skills and network to solve problems, starting with health care challenges in Ghana.  

Growing up, Rockson suffered from a number of medical conditions and spent a lot of time in the hospital. His mother, a teacher and the family’s main breadwinner, borrowed money from friends to afford his medicine. As Rockson grew older, he learned that cost wasn’t the only challenge. The drug supply chain was broken. Pharmacies often couldn’t keep critical medicines in stock, and there was no pricing transparency or infrastructure connecting patients, hospitals, and pharmacies. A doctor could prescribe a medication to a patient, and the patient would visit multiple area pharmacies in hopes that the medicine was in stock and not too expensive; at one pharmacy a drug could cost twice as much as at another, because there was no pricing regulation.

At 22, he co-founded mPharma to improve the drug supply chain by working with a network of pharmacies to negotiate better prices from pharmaceutical companies and make drugs available where and when patients need them. “If consumers have access to information, that allows them to decide not to be a customer of a particular business,” he says. “Businesses feel that, and it forces them to change.”  

To help fund the business and gather advice, Rockson reached out to contacts he’d met at the World Economic Forum. They immediately saw the potential. In time, some major pharmaceutical companies did as well, along with other investors. Today, through mPharma, more than 1,000 hospitals and pharmacies in nine African countries have helped more than 2 million people save on medications. “Without the Rotary scholarship that took me to Copenhagen, none of this would have happened,” says Rockson.  

Gregory Rockson

  • PPIA Junior Summer Institute Fellow, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, 2011 
  • Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, University of Copenhagen, 2011-12 
  • Bachelor’s in political science, Westminster College, 2012

It was just the start. Through his work with mPharma, Rockson saw that people were using pharmacists for basic health needs. “The pharmacist is actually the most accessible health care worker in the community,” he says. His next idea: What if people could see a doctor or nurse within their neighborhood pharmacy, similar to clinics at CVS or Walgreens? His team launched a franchising model in 2018 called QualityRX, which invests in renovations so that pharmacies can provide complimentary health care via a nurse and virtual doctors, and patients simply pay for prescriptions. “Today, we’ve become the largest operator of community pharmacies in sub-Saharan Africa,” he says, “and we deliver medical care to over 250,000 patients each month.”   

Rockson is as modest as they come, even as his work is heralded internationally, with honors and awards from Bloomberg, the Skoll Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and most recently, Rotary with its Alumni Global Service Award. “My life journey has always been about people who’ve taken bets on me, who have seen things in me I didn’t even know about myself,” he says. “Even when I didn’t think I was worthy of their support, they still gave me that support because they saw something in me I didn’t see.” 

Now, he works to find that spark in others. “We have well over 1,200 employees in the company, and it has always been my joy taking the young, new employees and giving them opportunities to grow,” he says. “Because that has been the story of my life.” 

But perhaps his greatest joy is the impact that he’s had on the health of friends, family, and hundreds of thousands of people in Africa. He says his aging parents are two of his most important patients. “We have two programs for chronic disease management, and my mom and dad were among the first patients enrolled,” he says. “I always tell people, I am the No. 1 user of my own services.” 

He may not be a doctor. But he has no regrets.

This story originally appeared in the May 2023 issue of Rotary magazine.

How the CART Fund is fueling Alzheimer’s research

By 

Nancy Rogers seemed too young to have Alzheimer's disease. But in 1999, her husband, Norm, knew something was wrong. First, she misplaced a couple of pocketbooks. Then, she started getting lost on the 11-mile commute from her office to her home in Raleigh, North Carolina.

"I would get a call from a highway patrolman 60 miles away in Greensboro saying that your wife is here at 7-Eleven, and she's lost," remembers Rogers.

As the years passed, he had to explain to his grandchildren why Grandma didn't know them. "It's horrible," he says. "It's the longest goodbye you'll ever have in your life."

Nancy died in 2010 at age 61. Rogers was in the depths of grief when a fellow Rotarian asked for a favor. He was the district chair of an effort called Coins for Alzheimer's Research Trust, or CART Fund, which raises money from Rotary members to support Alzheimer's research grants. He had to quickly leave town to care for an ill family member and asked if Rogers could step in and take over his duties.

"I jumped in the car, went to 51 Rotary clubs in three months, and drove 1,200 miles, and that was my introduction to CART," says Rogers. At the clubs, he encouraged members to empty their pockets into a little blue bucket. Each coin donated would go on to fund early-stage research on Alzheimer's. "I did it to honor Nancy."

From left: Norm Rogers, Rotary Club of District 7730 Passport, North Carolina; Carol Burdette, Rotary Club of Anderson, South Carolina; Rod Funderburk, Rotary Club of Lake Murray-Irmo, South Carolina; Tiffany Ervin, Rotary Club of Hendersonville-Four Seasons, North Carolina; and Bill Shillito, Rotary Club of Catawba Valley (Conover), North Carolina

Photography by Sean Rayford

Twelve years later, Rogers is a regional director for CART. When he travels to talk to Rotary clubs in North and South Carolina, he always asks the same question: "How many of you have been touched by Alzheimer's?" Invariably, at least 50 percent of the room raises a hand. That's because there's no cure or effective and accessible treatment. And there's much work to be done.

Some of that hard work has been made possible by CART, which started with an idea that came to longtime South Carolina Rotarian Roger Ackerman in the middle of the night back in 1995.

Ackerman was a go-getter, a problem solver, an ideas man. An active Rotary member since the 1960s, he relished the way Rotarians tackled different community challenges. But he puzzled over how Rotary members, or anyone, could help solve Alzheimer's, which had also touched his family.

Over nearly two decades, he and his wife, Deane, had watched their "Mother Love" — Deane's mom and Ackerman's mother-in-law, Rae Wodis — slowly lose herself to the disease. In the last four years of her life, she lost the ability to communicate. She couldn't remember who her family was.

"I cannot give you an adjective to describe the heartbreak to a family to see someone you love absolutely in a living-death status," Ackerman recounted during a Rotary presentation in 2013. "Can you imagine not being able to tell someone that you're hungry? That you need to go to the bathroom? That your throat hurts? Things that we do every day and take for granted. No one should have to do that."

During the time that his mother-in-law was suffering, he couldn't find research that gave him hope for an end to the disease, or even a way to treat it. That meant that other families were bound for the same tragic road he'd gone down, and that pained him.

That's when the early-morning inspiration hit. Ackerman had been fast asleep in his bed in Sumter, South Carolina. The day before, he'd had lunch with a friend, who had told him that $8 billion to $9 billion in coins changed hands every day in America. He jolted out of bed, realizing that pocket change could be the key to a cure.

Ackerman waited for the sun to rise and then called the president and president-elect of his Rotary club. He explained his vision. He wanted the effort to be straightforward: Place a little blue bucket on a table and ask Rotarians to toss in their pocket change at each meeting. It would be called the Coins for Alzheimer's Research Trust Fund, or the CART Fund, and all money would go to research grants.

The club's board of directors took it to a vote and unanimously agreed to start a trial program in late 1995. In seven months, the initiative raised $4,200.

To Ackerman, that was proof his concept could work — that people were willing to empty their pockets, and that pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters could add up to some serious cash. If other clubs joined the effort, the sky was the limit. To rally support, Ackerman traveled to different clubs — first in the area, and then around South Carolina, and eventually to clubs in North Carolina, Georgia, and beyond — to talk about a disease that today affects 1 of 9 older Americans. He urged clubs to add a little blue bucket to meetings and drop their coins in. He believed in the CART Fund so strongly himself, it didn't take long to get buy-in.

Ackerman died in 2018, but his legacy lives on. "He had the ability to persuade you to hitch your wagon to his horse," remembers Rod Funderburk, board president of the CART Fund and a member of the Rotary Club of Lake Murray-Irmo, South Carolina. "I mean, it was a crazy idea. But Roger had the ability to persuade people."

In 1999, that loose change added up to $100,000, and the CART Fund, with guidance from the American Federation for Aging Research, made its first grant to a team at Emory University led by neurologist Allan Levey. He was researching whether biological markers in a person's blood could be an early indicator of Alzheimer's disease.

That grant was life-changing for him and his lab. "It came at a really important time early in our career and our trajectory, and was sufficient to influence the course of research for us for the next several decades," recalls Levey, who today is the director of both the Goizueta Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and the Goizueta Institute @Emory Brain Health.

Although Levey and his team weren't successful in developing a blood test, he says that the project opened a new era of research for them — and led to millions of dollars in grants that would follow. Today, they lead national programs for understanding the causes of Alzheimer's disease, its biological markers, and possible treatment targets.

Norm Rogers, Rotary Club of District 7730 Passport, North Carolina.

But it wasn't just the funding that shaped Levey's life and his career. He became close friends with Ackerman and other Rotary members involved with the CART Fund. He admired what they were doing and saw that he could fill an important role in the organization. "Roger always put me in the role of helping me translate science into lay understanding for him and the rest of the CART board," Levey says.

That role was formalized in 2006, when Levey became part of CART's scientific advisory board. He helps select several annual grant recipients and translates their work into plain language that makes sense to Rotarians without a science or medical background. The selected scientists vary by interest and background, but they tend to have one thing in common: They're pursuing ideas that wouldn't receive traditional funding, usually because they don't yet have the data to support the idea at hand.

"The CART approach is to invest in young, promising scientists and research that is higher risk but could have a higher impact if that research could be sustained," says Levey. "So it's really to help get the seed funding for the initial experiments that will then grow and gather support to really take off."

Over about two decades, Ackerman attended more than 200 Rotary functions as a guest speaker, telling the story of his mother-in-law and the CART Fund, and how Rotarians could help unlock new understandings about the disease.

When he talks to Rotary clubs, Norm Rogers asks: “How many of you have been touched by Alzheimer’s?” Invariably, at least 50 percent of the room raises a hand.

"He's the reason that CART is successful. It's a brilliant concept. And it's so easy to explain," says Bill Shillito, chairman of the Alzheimer's/Dementia Rotary Action Group, who served as CART Fund's executive director from 2009 until retiring in May 2022. "But it would have died without Roger's passion. He was courageous and tenacious."

Alzheimer's, a progressive neurological disorder and the most common type of dementia, mostly affects people older than 65, though it can develop in those who are younger. The disease, which causes memory loss, disorientation, personality changes, and other symptoms, has grown more prevalent in recent decades. Between 1990 and 2019, global incidences of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias increased by nearly 150 percent, according to a study published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. The older adult population in the U.S. is expected to grow, and by the year 2050, the Alzheimer's Association predicts that the number of Americans 65 and older with Alzheimer's may reach more than 12 million — nearly double what it is today.

Ackerman found purpose in CART, and now others do too, like Funderburk, the CART Fund board president. In the mid-1980s, when Funderburk was an engineering supervisor, a remarkable engineer named Joseph Bearden joined his team. "He was brilliant," Funderburk says. "We built chemical plants all over the world." When Bearden retired, Funderburk stayed in touch. At age 70, the engineer was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and Funderburk watched with sadness as his essence seemed to fade. "The last 3½ years of his life, he knew nobody. He was in a shell by himself," says Funderburk. "He'd been the most organized engineer I've ever met. But Alzheimer's took over." When Bearden died, Funderburk was at a loss. "I looked around and asked: How do you solve this thing?" he says. That led him to the CART Fund.

Tiffany Ervin, the fund's executive director and a member of the Rotary Club of Hendersonville-Four Seasons, North Carolina, says that most of the people involved have a personal connection to the disease. Her mom started showing signs of Alzheimer's in 2010, at age 70. Watching her lose her memory was agonizing. In particular, Ervin recalls a Mother's Day visit. "She said, 'Why are you wanting to spend the day with me today? Wouldn't you rather be with your mom or your family?'" she recalls. "It was like a knife to my gut." Shortly after her mom died in 2018, Erwin was invited to become vice president of public image for the CART Fund. She says that it gave her purpose and a platform to share her mom's story. Today Ervin says, "Everywhere I go, someone has an Alzheimer's story, unfortunately. Our goal is for people to no longer have an Alzheimer's story."

Over the last two-plus decades, pocket change — and donations made at cartfund.org, which accepts funds in an increasingly cashless society — has accumulated more than anyone had dared to dream. Today, 41 Rotary districts contribute, and, as of last year, the donations had amounted to $11.2 million dollars, funding 64 grants. Over that time, 100 percent of every dollar donated has gone to research, just as Ackerman insisted. Those grant recipients have gone on to receive many millions more in traditional funding, from sources such as the National Institutes of Health. "We have a huge percentage of success," says Funderburk, "if you count success as a researcher that proves their hypothesis and gets additional money." Reflecting on past grant recipients, Levey says that many of those early-career scientists have gone on to become prominent figures, even referring to them as "giants in the field."

CART-funded research has been wide-ranging and experimental; some of the researchers have called their own studies "provocative," "high-risk," and "highly controversial." In 2022, CART awarded grants to three research teams for a total of $850,000. Those researchers are studying ways to transport protective antibodies into the brain; whether medications for other illnesses, such as malaria, might potentially slow Alzheimer's; and the role ancient viruses may play in diseases such as Alzheimer's.

Tiffany Ervin, Rotary Club of Hendersonville-Four Seasons, North Carolina.

 

Beyond the impact of the research, the CART Fund has paved the way for relationships and experiences that Rotarians and researchers relish. Grant recipients are asked to travel at their own expense to the annual CART Fund board meeting in May in South Carolina for the announcement of the winners. There they have dinner with CART Fund board members and present their research to Rotarians.

Norm Rogers says he has learned an extraordinary amount about the disease through these meetings. He channels the grief over his wife's death into educating others and encouraging them to empty their pockets into that little blue bucket. "We go back and keep it at a third grade level and explain it to our clubs," he says. "And it's proven that when we tell them what we're working on, they say, 'Oh Lord, we need to give you more!'"

The scientists, too, take away more than funding. All of the 2022 grant recipients say that they are energized by the dedication of the Rotary members. "They have an incredible passion," says grant recipient Peter Tessier, the Albert M. Mattocks Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan. "After spending time with them, I went back and was completely humbled and honored and appreciative and impressed. I've not really met a group like that. They're really unique."

And Jerold Chun, a 2022 grant recipient who is a professor and senior vice president of neuroscience drug discovery with the Sanford Burnham Prebys biomedical research institute in La Jolla, California, was similarly moved and grateful to be a part of CART. "They gave their blood, sweat, tears, and money to allow us to take a crack at this," he says.

“Everywhere I go, someone has an Alzheimer’s story, unfortunately. Our goal is for people to no longer have an Alzheimer’s story.”

Chun believes that this kind of grassroots motivation is key to helping scientists pursue new ideas and gain a deeper understanding of the brain. "There's so much that we as scientists don't know," he says. "Every effort to better define how our brains work is an effort worth pursuing and supporting."

That notion, in fact, was what was on Levey's mind in the fall of 2022 when he read about promising results in a late-stage trial for a new drug, developed by companies Biogen and Eisai, that seems to modestly slow cognitive decline in people with early-stage Alzheimer's. "It's the first drug that really seems to have consistent benefits in slowing down the course of Alzheimer's disease," he says. "That's a huge breakthrough to have the first treatment that looks like it's on our doorstep."

Of course, his mind went to CART Fund research. While the drug didn't come from the initiative, he says that it rests on the shoulders of thousands of researchers and decades of work, and those little blue buckets have been a part of that. You could say that Alzheimer's research has been building like pocket change. It started small and fragmented, but with dedication, determination, and vision, it has flourished.

This story originally appeared in the May 2023 issue of Rotary magazine.

The Alzheimer’s/Dementia action group is addressing the challenge of the rising

number of people affected by brain disorders.

  LEARN MORE  

Turkey and Syria were struck by a devastating earthquake on 6 February that has killed tens of thousands of people, destroyed thousands of homes and other structures, and left people across the region without shelter in bitterly cold winter weather. While still providing aid to those impacted by the first earthquake, another 6.4 magnitude earthquake occured in the same area on 20 February, bringing even more devastation. 

The Rotary world responded to this catastrophe immediately. RI President Jennifer Jones activated our disaster response efforts, communicated with the affected districts, and encouraged governors in those regions to apply for disaster response grants and share information about their relief efforts so that Rotary can amplify the calls for support.

The Rotary Foundation Trustees decided that all donations made, from now until 31 March, to the Turkey/Syria Disaster Response Fund will be used to aid earthquake relief projects. In addition, the Trustees made available more than $125,000 to Rotary districts affected by the earthquake through Disaster Response Grants.

Rotary's project partner ShelterBox also has an emergency response team assessing the needs in the region and how it can respond. That team is communicating with Rotary district leaders. Rotary's service partner Habitat for Humanity International is also working on its response. Many Rotary members are asking how they can help. Here's how to have the greatest impact:

  • Give to Turkey/Syria Disaster Response Fund. Donations help clubs and districts provide aid and support rebuilding efforts where the need is greatest. The funds are distributed to affected communities through disaster response grants. The Disaster Response Fund can accept cash contributions and District Designated Funds (DDF).
  • Support local initiatives. As we learn about local response efforts that are being led by clubs and districts, Rotary raises awareness about how to support them. People can then support these projects by working directly with Rotary members in the region. If you want us to publicize information about local response efforts, write to relief@rotary.org.

9-Feb-2023

Speakers
Holly Dramis
Jun 01, 2023
Hospice of Homer
Kim Zook
Jun 08, 2023
Report on RI Convention
Missy Martin
Jun 15, 2023 12:00 PM
Anchor Point Food Pantry Building Project
Jasmine Maurer
Jun 22, 2023 12:00 PM
European Green Crab in AK Waters
Kim Zook & Owen Meyer
Jun 29, 2023 12:00 PM
Changing of the Guard
Matt Steffy
Jul 13, 2023
The Power of Partnerships
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