Our peer support membership grew by over 15% this year, connecting in new places worldwide like Israel, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and the Philippines. We continue to send out newly diagnosed family packages and educational materials to be distributed in NICUs and PICUs, worldwide, as well as supporting our loss families. We introduced our Cup of Hope support program this year, with surprise givebacks to our families, nurses, and other providers with a warm cup of Starbucks. We distributed over 350 cups of coffee to perk people up and keep them going! Crystal Kostick and I audited the Child Neurology Foundation peer support training program, and we are eager to get our peer mentorship program up and running in 2022. We closed out this year with our sixth annual Hope for the Holidays giveaway program, in our parent support hub and loss support group, gifting over 150 families various items such as adaptive equipment, experiences and products to make life a little easier, and kicked off a partnership with the Songs of Love foundation.

Meeting in-person continued to be difficult, and we made the heart wrenching decision to cancel our delayed retreat in Florida due to the pandemic. We did enjoy seeing so many people participate (over 400!) in our second annual virtual Hustle for Hope 5K, and the Shah family in Wisconsin hosted a very successful and fun Hops for Hope event, raising nearly $2,500 of support and celebrating their son, Kiran's, first birthday. We did enjoy seeing many of our families meeting up on beaches, at parks, and other places around the world, and really hope 2022 will allow for more in-person events.

We produced over 15 educational videos, and several blog posts, with our Medical Advisory Board on topics of biggest impact to our community. These are all captioned and available with translation into users preferred languages on Facebook and YouTube, also accessible via our website. We also launched a podcast, Just Say HIE, to help share family stories, and bring some of the MAB content to audio. In addition, we created NICU and PICU educational materials to help clinicians better communicate and connect with families regarding a HIE diagnosis. It has been translated into seven different languages, and over 3,000 copies have been printed and distributed, worldwide, with countless downloads on our newly launched website. Annie Goeller worked hard to redesign our website, and we look forward to continuing to build it out in 2022.

Global HIE Awareness Month in April garnered over 1,000,000 impressions through the multi-faceted campaign we implemented. This year's theme of "Team Hope" really brought everyone together, as every team member in the global HIE community contributes to ensuring families don't face HIE alone. We implemented a message in 2021 of "name the diagnosis" as far too many families are still finding the HIE diagnosis far after their acute NICU or PICU experiences, which is a barrier to care and support.

We continued advocating for equity in NICU messaging, working with NICU social media influencers to be more inclusive and mindful of full term NICU experiences such as HIE, and worked with other NICU support organizations to include resources from our organization for HIE families they may connect with. We also finally got HIE listed in several online disorder directories, and continue to partner with organizations like NINDS, CNF, EFA and LGSF to ensure our families feel seen and included.

Part of advocacy was speaking about the HIE family experience and the community needs. Hope for HIE spoke to Cleveland Clinic's Neonatal Grand Rounds, the Graven's Conference, the NICU Leadership Forum, the Newborn Brain Society webinar series, and the Vermont-Oxford Network quality conference.

Amy Cutler and I had an opportunity to attend the American Epilepsy Conference in Chicago before Omicron hit, and it was wonderful to connect with the Rare Epilepsy Network, as well as some of our Medical Advisory Board members, and hold several conversations about including HIE in research and support to better serve our community.