In honor of Volunteer Appreciation Month, we’re proud to recognize the extraordinary community of volunteers who help drive LBCA’s mission forward every day. From patient advocates to clinicians and researchers, the dedication, compassion, and expertise of our volunteers help create meaningful impact to raise awareness and expand understanding of invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC). Whether sharing their story, serving on a committee or board, championing awareness in a local community or hospital, presenting a webinar on new ILC research or speaking with the press – volunteer contributions accelerate our progress towards a future without ILC.

We are thankful for the following excellent volunteer efforts that helped spotlight ILC and LBCA this past year:

• Advocates and volunteers joined with ILC researchers around the world to bring awareness to ILC by sharing information on ILC, creating reels about the importance of ILC research and hosting events on the 2nd annual, October 15th Global Lobular Breast Cancer Awareness Day. 
• Volunteer advocates living with metastatic ILC recorded a video about their experiences to share online during October 15th awareness day events.
• Over 1,700 survey respondents volunteered their time to share their experiences with ILC and surveillance.  
• Volunteers and scientists drafted lay summaries of most of the 60+ scientific abstracts on new ILC research findings presented as posters at SABCS in December 2025 for sharing on the LBCA website.
• Volunteer advocates living with metastatic ILC worked to launch new virtual support groups specifically for individuals with metastatic ILC with Metavivor.
• Local Advocacy Teams in the Carolinas, DMV and Cascadia (Oregon and Washington) continued work to personally bring LBCA’s materials and information about ILC to local communities and expand LBCA’s reach to raise awareness of ILC and the need for more research to more locations around the country. 
• Scientific Advisory Board members and other researchers presented 2 webinars in LBCA’s Liquid Biopsy Webinar series to help educate the ILC community on the current utility and limitations of using liquid biopsies in lobular breast cancer treatment for monitoring for recurrences or metastatic progressions.
• LBCA Board member and ILC Patient Advocate Brenda Cunnington was the first panelist in the first-ever session on lobular breast cancer at the annual Breast Cancer Symposium of Canada.  
• LBCA Patient Advocate Brenda Sulick represented LBCA and in our role as new member of the recently launched Alliance for Breast Cancer Policy Meeting.      
• LBCA Board Member and harpist, Dr. Kathy Krantz, created a holiday harp music CD to distribute as thank you gifts to inspire more donors to LBCA.
• Volunteer Advocates created peer to peer fundraisers online to help us reach the goal of $150K for ILC research for the October 15th Lobular Breast Cancer Awareness Day.

We are so grateful to have dedicated volunteers working by our side. Their passion and commitment to our mission is invaluable and fuels everything we do. With incredible volunteers as partners and collaborators, LBCA’s small but mighty team continues to accomplish great things each year!