Atlanta Gene Screen Founder Named Hero
Image by courtesy of jfna
They?re Our Heroes: Randy Gold, founder of the Atlanta Jewish Gene Screen, and his wife, Caroline, accept award from Robert Arogeti of the Atlanta Federation. Image by courtesy of jfna
The third annual Jewish Community Heroes Award was given to Randy Gold of Atlanta for his work creating the Atlanta Jewish Gene Screen.
In order to be chosen for the award, given by the Jewish Federations of North America, Gold received almost 9,000 online votes out of 240,000 cast to reach the semi-finals, before going before a panel of judges including Idealist.org founder Ami Dar, television actress Mayim Bialik and Forward editor Jane Eisner.
Jewish Gene Screen works to educate, doctors, rabbis and community members of testing for Jewish genetic diseases. It has held events for Jewish singles, put brochures on the seats of every synagogue, placed prominent billboards and put posters in Starbucks.
According to the nomination for the Community Heroes award, screening in Atlanta has increased by 400 percent, and in the long run, the organization hopes to make screening a standard medical practice for Jewish couples worldwide.
Gold, the chief operations officer at an accounting firm, founded Jewish Gene Screen his wife, Caroline, in 2010 after their second child, Eden, was diagnosed at 18 months with Mucolipidosis Type IV, a genetic disease that disproportionately affects Ashkenazi Jews.
The Golds’ doctors had tested for only eight diseases, unaware of the full complement of diseases to which Ashkenazi Jews are susceptible. One in five Ashkenazi Jews is a carrier for at least one of 11 genetic diseases for which screening was recommended in 2009. Today, some urge that Ashkenazi Jews be screened to see if they are carriers for 19 genetic diseases.
“My daughter isn’t going to go to kindergarten, college, walk down the aisle or have kids of her own, we deal with that challenge every day, we don’t want anyone to go through what we did, and that’s why we created Jewish Gene Screen,” Gold told JTA in an interview prior to being informed that he had been chosen.
“To pick a Hero among heroes is a huge responsibility and not an easy one,” Bialik said. “However, the work that Randy Gold has done is not only one of true menschkeit and selflessness; and it is not simply a matter of taking a tragedy and turning it upside down. What Randy has done is lay the groundwork for changing the way Jewish people understand and create future generations with our genetics. Randy is literally taking one life and turning it into generations and generations of simchas as numerous as the stars of the sky!”
Four runners-up were also chosen by the judges: Shana Erenberg of Chicago, Tessa Gerall of Houston, Hart Levine of New York and Jenine Shwekey of New Jersey. Each will receive $1,000 for their causes.
According to Gold, the $25,000 award will go to furthering awareness and pay for screenings for the uninsured and underinsured. He told JTA that by this time next year the program hopes to expand to 10 more cities.
“A couple can have healthy children of their own even if they’re both carriers of the same mutation, why not have this knowledge before it’s too late?” he said.
His daughter Eden will be 4 in January and is currently working with physical therapists to learn to stand. She will likely never speak, by the time she is a teenager she’ll be blind, and she is unlikely to live to early adulthood.
“Eden is saving lives,” said Gold. “And if that’s what she’s here to do, there is nothing more worthy then that.”
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