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Last Updated: 18 September 2023 18 September 2023

Massachusetts ME/CFS & FM Association is an all-volunteer organization. Please become a member to help us to continue our work and respond to the many needs of the patient community. All of our income is used to support essential services.

Become a member or renew your membership  

An annual Membership Contribution of $25/year for Individuals, and $40 for a Family (two or more related individuals), is requested for membership.  Larger membership contributions help support those who are unable to pay.

If you are unable to afford the Membership Contribution, we offer Courtesy and Reduced Fee memberships.

We use your support to:

• Publish our website which provides up-to-date information about ME/CFS and fibromyalgia covering a broad range of topics, sends out alerts about current news and developments, and accepts requests for support services

• Maintain our Information Line where trained volunteers respond to general questions about the two illnesses (which often overlap) and serve as a gateway to the Association's support services

• Assist with referrals to healthcare providers

• Give guidance on disability process and related issues

• Better educate and expand awareness within the community

• Establish a public information group to reach out to various forms of media

• Improve communication with pertinent state and federal agencies

• Sponsor public educational lectures

• Be advocates at all possible levels (local, state, national)

Become a member or renew your membership

All contributions or donations are gratefully acknowledged and are tax-deductible to the full extent allowed by law. We thank you for your support.

Courtesy and Reduced Fee Memberships

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Last Updated: 06 February 2023 06 February 2023

Our primary goal as an Association is to serve those with ME/CFS. No one interested in becoming a member will be excluded because of financial hardship.

If the $25 annual membership contribution constitutes a significant hardship, we offer Courtesy (free) and Reduced Fee ("Pay What You Can") membership.

For a Courtesy or Reduced Fee Membership, please do the following:

1. Fill out the Membership form on our website; sign up for Courtesy Membership and check the box "I will send payment by check." Submit the form. These steps are necessary to complete the enrollment process.
2. For a Courtesy membership: You may ignore the "Invoice" which will arrive automatically via email.
3. For a Reduced Fee membership: Follow the steps above and then Donate what you are able to afford.

Courtesy and Reduced Fee memberships carry all the benefits and privileges of Individual membership.

Sample Letter

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Last Updated: 23 January 2016 23 January 2016

In this day age of electronic communication, emails tend to get lost among the masses. If you have the strength, it is better to write a letter and mail it.

Sample Letter 

As one of your voting constituents, I ask that you support increased research on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome(ME/CFS)  also known as the Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS). Over 2,000,000 American men, women, and children of all races and socioeconomic classes have ME/CFS. ME/CFS is a terribly debilitating and serious illness, with symptoms including incapacitating fatigue (experienced as profound exhaustion and extremely poor stamina), muscle and joint pain, cognitive difficulties such as information processing and concentration problems, and numerous other symptoms. Persons with ME/CFS if not totally disabled, function at a substantially lower level of activity than they were capable of before becoming ill.

Although there have been many advances in the understanding of ME/CFS, it remains a complex and difficult disease to diagnose and treat. Improved understanding is severely hampered by inadequate funding for the critical research needed to better define its impact and identify more effective treatments to ultimately find the cause, treatment and a cure. In a recent survey fielded to more than 8,100 medical professionals and researchers from a variety of disciplines, 77% felt that the amount of professional education about ME/CFS is not adequate and 87% indicated a need for more funding for ME/CFS research.

Therefore, I urge you to support legislation which will increase the amount and quality of research on ME/CFS by our national public health agencies. For more information, please contact the Massachusetts CFIDS/ME & FM Association at 617-471-5559 or visit their website at www.masscfids.org. Please help us increase awareness of ME/CFS by recognizing May 12 as International ME/CFS Awareness Day. Thank you for your consideration of these important matters.

Sincerely,
 

____________________________________

Newsletter Re-direct

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Last Updated: 20 July 2018 20 July 2018

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Welcome to our website

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Last Updated: 06 March 2012 06 March 2012

The Massachusetts CFIDS/ME & FM Association Website Committee members have experienced CFIDS/ME and FM in their lives for an aggregate of about 125 patient-years. I think that vast patient knowledge, wisdom, and experience are reflected on this site. We have tried to construct the site to be very comprehensive, especially in the areas of Diagnosis, Treatment and Disability. We feel that the illnesses described by the 2003 Canadian Definition, the 1988 CDC Definition, and the London Criteria for ME established by Ramsay and Dowsett are all the same illness. We are using CFS/CFIDS/ME as the name of the illness to reflect that belief. We also think this is not the same as the illnesses described by the flawed CDC 1994 Definition of CFS or the even more deeply flawed Oxford Criteria for CFS. Anyone who wishes to evaluate the validity of the research carried out on CFS/CFIDS/ME needs to know the difference in the various definitions of the illness, their flaws, and which was used in a given study. So we have devoted a unique amount of space on our site to that topic.

In closing, I'd like to give special thanks to our Website Committee members and our professional website designer Karan Parkin of Parkin Design. Without their expertise, this website definitely wouldn't exist.

We have tried to design our site to have something for everyone. We hope you enjoy browsing here and that you come back often!

Lucy Dechéne
Website Committee Chairperson