After his beloved wife died of a treatable disease, Romel Lacson put his grief to work. His vision: to organize a national alliance of people living with and surviving tuberculosis.

To date, Lacson has created TB awareness programs in Brazil, Thailand, Texas, and South Carolina. He also is behind the Amaya-Lacson TB Photovoice Project, a creative writing and photography project that gives TB patients and survivors an outlet for their emotions and a way to educate others. It also helps mobilize TB-affected communities to disseminate their knowledge and advocate for policies that would lead to the elimination of the disease.

Lacson and his wife, Claudia Amaya-Lacson, met at Carolina as graduate students in public health. Claudia, who had a medical degree from her native Colombia, received her master's degree in 1995. Lacson, who earned a bachelor's degree in music education from Carolina and completed two years of service with the Peace Corps, received his master's degree in 1996. They married and moved to Atlanta to start promising careers: she joined a rural health program at the Georgia Health Policy Center at Georgia State University, and he went to work for the Centers for Disease Control. They were enjoying life and expecting twins when Claudia became ill. Within weeks, she succumbed to tuberculosis meningitis.

“Even though we worked in the public health field, we never thought TB would affect us,” Lacson said. “TB was one of the most dreaded diseases of the 19th century. Thanks to medications, vaccines, and improved living conditions, it was largely eradicated in the United States by 1960. But it is making a comeback. Two million people in the world still die annually from TB, even though it's a curable disease.

“After Claudia died, I educated myself by talking to experts and going to international conferences focused on the disease,” he said. “The TB community needed meaningful involvement of people with TB. There were plenty of physicians and scientists involved, but people who had the disease weren't represented. I want to create a positive rally cry around this disease and create a demand for more vaccines and better drugs.”