Kidney walk May 22 Kidney walk May 22 (May 14, 2004)

Shoreline Park event will raise funds to fight kidney disease

By Corey Pride

The Northern California chapter of the National Kidney Foundation will hold a walk at Shoreline Park May 22 to raise funds to help educate kidney disease patients and their families about the illness.

The 2004 Kidney Walk will be held from 8 a.m. to noon and will feature a 5k and 10k course. More than 300 participants are expected. Although you can register for the walk at the park the day of the event, the foundation is asking people to sign up through its website (www.kidneynca.org) beforehand in order to avoid long lines.

Walkers are being asked to collect a minimum of $50 in pledges. The foundation is hoping to raise $50,000 to support programs about kidney disease in northern California.

Coordinator Rachel Isip said the walk is an event the whole family can participate in.

"We encourage teams because it's much easier to raise funds in a group," Isip said. "The course is almost completely flat. It's accessible to people in wheelchairs or people with strollers."

In addition to the walk the event will include an area for on-site massages, blood pressure checks, a "wellness area" where people can learn how to prevent kidney disease, a raffle with more than 20 prizes and bags of free product samples for participants Twenty million Americans suffer from chronic kidney disease, said Christopher Kelley, CEO of the Northern California chapter of the kidney foundation. Kelley said there is a shortage of people who donate kidneys and he hopes the walk will motivate more people to become donors. "It's like every other transplant organ," he said. "The number of people in need has risen and the number of organ donors has remained the same." There will be organ donor cards available at the walk.

E-mail a friend a link to this story.