The Instituto Lado a Lado pela Vida – LAL (means Side by Side for Life Institute) is a civil society organization founded in 2008 by Marlene Oliveira, a social entrepreneur, with the main purpose of promoting awareness on the importance of prevention and early diagnosis as well as offering information about the estate-of-the-art possibilities of treatment and how to manage life and deal with the daily activities as a survivor who had fought with cardiovascular diseases or cancer, the two main global death causes. Lado a Lado pela Vida is also the only patient organization in Brazil dedicated to promote a relevant debate about men’s health.

Its mission is to nurture the Brazilian population with accurate information and orientation about public policies for health, empowering each citizen to strengthen the awareness of their own power to control their lives. LAL is a reference institution dedicated to offer quality information and also to promote discussion of issues that impact patients’ access to an existing and dignified treatment. LAL provides knowledge that targets the well-being of patients throughout their journey, such as topics related to integrated medicine and personalized medicine among other advances in science.

Lado a Lado pela Vida values are transparency, solidarity bonds, collective construction of knowledge, ethics, empathy and respect for others in all their singularity and diversity. Many accomplishments have highlighted LAL’s trajectory, but the most rewarding of them all has been the daily construction of its recognition and reputation as a patient organization committed to improve the health and the life quality of all Brazilian citizens.