Hull resident Lisa Sestito will run in the 124th Boston Marathon on April 20 as part of the Massachusetts General Hospital Marathon Team raising money for the MGH Emergency Response Team.
Sestito will join an estimated 30,000 runners along the 26.2-mile course that spans from Hopkinton to Boston’s Boylston Street. The funds Sestito raises will help support training and resources to further develop an integrated response that spans the hospital and enables it to be ready for the next disaster – be it manmade or natural. The team’s 2020 fundraising goal is $430,000.
Sestito, who is running her first marathon this year, has a strong connection to MGH. She underwent a prophylactic double mastectomy at Mass. General, and her youngest son received diagnosis and treatment for benign rolandic epilepsy through the hospital.
Sestito says she is grateful for emergency responders, with her family having received aid from them on many occasions, including when her house burned to the ground nine days before Christmas in 2014.
In recognition of the lifesaving response of hospital employees after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, the Mass. General Marathon Team received additional entries to raise money for the hospital’s Emergency Response Fund. The MGH runners have raised more than $2.3 million in six years, providing funding to the hospital’s emergency medicine and disaster preparedness efforts.
“We have 40 runners running for Emergency Response,” says David Brown, M.D., chief of the Department of Emergency Medicine at MGH. “In emergency medicine, we pride ourselves on being ready to respond at a moment’s notice. Our motto is: ‘anyone, anything, anytime.’ Preparing for that next disaster takes thoughtful training and lots of practice. Money raised by the Mass. General Emergency Response Team allows MGH to be ready … when seconds count.”
To learn more about the Mass. General Emergency Response Team, go to https://giving.massgeneral.org/boston-marathon/emergency-response-team/.
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