The Story Continues with Our Friends at the Progeria Research Foundation

Sam Berns and his family have had a wild few months. In October, HBO premiered the award-winning LIFE ACCORDING TO SAM, a feature-length documentary telling the story of how Sam and his family set out to find a cure for Progeria – the rare disease Sam’s lived with his whole life. The release of the film took him to New England’s Patriots practices, Katie Couric’s talk show, luxury boxes at World Series games, high-profile radio interviews and more. But through it all, Sam’s remained the same: an inspiring young man with an uncanny ability to keep focused on what’s coming next and to do what’s needed to live a happy life.

ProSocial has had the privilege of working with The Progeria Research Foundation since June of this year, helping to build audiences for the film and to drive those audiences to taking action in the fight to find a cure for this fatal disease. PRF was founded by Sam’s parents – his aunt is the executive director – and in the past 12 years they’ve provided hope to families around the world confronted by Progeria.

Today, PRF is about to begin its next clinical trial at Boston Children’s Hospital, and to make that happen, it needs to raise almost $4 million. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft helped them get a quarter of the way there with an unprecedented challenge grant this fall – an effort that resulted in more than $1.1 million in funding. The push continues, however, and so will our work.

In the meantime, we recommend you check out the film on HBO. Learn more about PRF and if you have a few minutes, you can learn more about Sam’s take on life here in his just released TEDx talk, which The Dave Matthews Band supported with a $10K viewer challenge. We’ve learned a lot from Sam – and we think you can too.