June 2nd, Lou Gehrig Day
MLB promotes ALS awareness
Starting June 2nd Major League Baseball (MLB) honors the legendary Lou Gehrig and takes the opportunity to remind the country that even 86 years after Lou’s famous speech in Yankee Stadium, ALS continues to take lives at the same speed and rate and with the same brutality. Science still has no cure, no available, meaningful treatment for over 90% of cases, and virtually no understanding of the cause—no answer.
We share this story map by Will Hackney because it wonderfully captures how Lou “turned baseball on its head” and gives easy ways you can help bring ALS to its knees.
Farewell dear friend
On April 30 we lost our dear friend Ed Mytych to ALS. Ed was instrumental in many GeoALS successes, including making ALS Clinic Advisor survey results actionable through his data analysis skills. In honor of Ed, the GeoALS Clinic Survey has been named Ed Mytych Clinic Survey. For more about what Ed meant to us, see his tribute.
Please pay tribute to Ed by donating to his Hershey ALS United Walk Team: Alienate ALS as part of ALS Awareness Month in May. The walk takes place June 6, 2026.
Use this map to ask your House Rep to cosponsor the reauthorization of Act for ALS
The Act supports programs crucial to getting treatments to people living with ALS today and getting us closer to a cure. Watch this 2-minute video on how to use the map to contact your representative.
As of May 30, 2026, reauthorization is gaining strong bipartisan support in Congress and has passed committee unanimously. The bill now moves to the House.
-
Advisor Locator
Find clinic care based on location using the most complete clinic database in the United States.
-
Advisor Dashboard
Find clinic care based on clinic reviews that have been provided by people with ALS and ALS caregivers.
-
Ed Mytych Advisor Survey
The survey is an eye-gaze friendly questionnaire that lets people living with ALS & their caregivers review their clinic.
-
Add an ALS Clinic
Use this form to add a new clinic or a clinic not present in these apps. This form is also in several GeoALS apps.
Our mission is to use GIS to improve care, accelerate research, and advocate for the ALS community.
The seed idea for GeoALS came to founder Pat Dolan just after he was diagnosed with ALS in 2016. Up until 2016, Pat had spent 25 years working with GIS in the utility industry—20 of those years with Esri.
-
After Pat’s diagnosis, he wanted to apply his GIS skills to advance the science of ALS. With the help of his friends at Esri, he developed the ALS Geospatial Hub, which is a platform for advocates and researchers to access maps and apps developed for the ALS community.
Superhuman and tireless ALS Advocate Sandy Morris, whom we devastatingly lost in August 2022, joined forces with Pat in 2021 and brought her team of advocates to support the development of ALS Clinic Advisor and Legislative Viewer. See Sandy’s story on the I Am ALS website.
This group of GIS professionals and advocates are referred to as the Mappers.
GeoALS has nearly the same group of Mappers supporting it today.
In order to sustain this work, Pat founded the nonprofit GeoALS in October 2024. GeoALS is a member of the Esri Nonprofit program, which donated the ArcGIS Platform that powers the ALS Geospatial Hub.