Support the Foundation

Built by care partners.
Funded by people who give a damn.

Every dollar that reaches this platform comes from someone who decided that independent advocacy was worth protecting. There is no pharmaceutical money here. No hospital system grants. No corporate compromise of any kind. Just this.

Where this started.

Cold Ischemia did not begin as a platform. It began as a kitchen table conversation between two people trying to survive a system that had no interest in their survival.

Jeff and Marie Parke spent years navigating end-stage renal disease, home dialysis, and the transplant process — not as observers, not as clinicians, not as policy researchers with comfortable distance from the subject. As the people actually doing it. Three times a week. Every week. While managing equipment failures, insurance denials, provider dismissals, institutional indifference, and the quiet, grinding psychological cost of a role that the healthcare system requires and refuses to acknowledge.

Nobody built tools for them. Nobody wrote the guide they needed. Nobody was pushing for the legislation that would have protected them. The organizations that claimed to speak for patients were funded by the pharmaceutical companies shaping patient outcomes. The advocacy spaces that should have been sanctuaries had become transactional. The care partner — the person holding everything together — was invisible in every room that mattered.

So they built the room themselves.

Jeff and Marie Parke, founders of Cold Ischemia Foundation

Jeff & Marie Parke · Founders · Ellenton, Florida

Why independence is the only thing that matters.

There are hundreds of patient advocacy organizations in the United States. Nearly all of them accept pharmaceutical funding. Nearly all of them have a board member, a program sponsor, or a conference underwriter with a financial stake in the policies they are supposed to evaluate independently.

This is not a conspiracy. It is a structural reality that has quietly shaped what care partners are told, what they are not told, and what questions nobody in the advocacy space ever seems to ask out loud.

"The organizations that claimed to speak for patients were funded by the companies profiting from their illness. We could not fix that from inside it. So we built something outside it entirely."

Cold Ischemia accepts zero pharmaceutical funding. Zero dialysis corporation money. Zero hospital system grants. Zero sponsorships from any entity with a financial interest in the policies we scrutinize. That commitment is written into the foundation's structure — not as a policy that can be quietly reversed when funding gets tight, but as the non-negotiable condition under which this platform exists at all.

That independence costs something. It means this platform runs on membership fees and direct community support. It means we cannot take the easy money. It means every tool, every publication, every federal monitor, every investigative piece we publish answers to one constituency only: care partners.

Your support is what makes that possible.

Where your contribution goes.

Platform Hosting & InfrastructureNetlify CDN, SSL certification, domain registration, and the technical foundation that keeps coldischemia.foundation online and secure for every care partner who needs it.
AI Tool Development & MaintenanceSix AI-powered clinical tools built on Lean Six Sigma, Narrative Therapy, Statistical Process Control, and Ambiguous Loss Theory — maintained and expanded as care partner needs evolve.
Federal Intelligence MonitorsLive monitoring of CMS, HRSA, OPTN, Congress, and the transplant oversight apparatus — surfacing regulatory developments before they reach mainstream awareness.
Independent PublicationsResearch, writing, editing, and distribution of guides written from inside the chronic illness ecosystem — not commissioned by industry, not softened for a sponsor's comfort.
Legislative AdvocacyThe sustained work of pushing federal compensation legislation for unpaid care partners — the 53 million people this country depends on and has never once protected under law.

Independence Pledge — Permanent & Non-Negotiable. The Cold Ischemia Foundation accepts no funding, gifts, grants, sponsorships, or compensation of any kind from pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, dialysis corporations, transplant centers, hospital systems, or any entity with a financial interest in the policies this foundation exists to challenge. Your support funds this platform. Nothing else does. We answer to one constituency: care partners. No one else. Ever.