Arthritis advocacy gives hope and control for Kansas woman

Staci Penner began advocating for people with arthritis when her 9-year-old daughter was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis.

Four years later, Penner received her own diagnosis: rheumatoid arthritis.

Her advocacy hasn’t stopped.

“The diseases we have, you don’t necessarily have a lot of control over those diseases,” Penner said over the phone. “By advocating, I feel like I have hope, I have something I can do to have control.”

Penner, who is from North Newton, was honored this week with the Arthritis Foundation’s 2016 Edward M. Kennedy Advocacy Award. She was joined in Washington, D.C., by around 400 other arthritis patients and met with members of Congress to ask for more affordable health care.

There, they asked representatives to continue allowing children to remain on their parents’ health insurance until age 26, to ban lifetime limits on healthcare costs, to cap annual out-of-pocket patient costs, to ban lifetime limits on health care costs and more.

Penner has worked as the Arthritis Foundation’s advocacy chairperson of her local advisory board, the advocacy co-chair for the State of Kansas and a national Platinum Ambassador

Penner said when she and her now-16-year-old daughter share the stories of their daily struggles with arthritis, she feels like she is making a difference for everyone with the disease.

There are more than 50 million adults and nearly 300,000 children in the United States who have arthritis, according to the Arthritis Foundation.

“I’m very honored and thrilled to be given the Kennedy award,” Penner said. “I don’t feel like I do anything different than the other advocates do. We’re all in there, we’re all working hard, we’re all trying to make a difference for those with arthritis.”

This story was originally published March 10, 2017 at 2:09 PM with the headline "Arthritis advocacy gives hope and control for Kansas woman."