I photograph several charity walks each year. There are two that I have been working with continuously longer than any others. The first is City of Hope’s Walk for Hope.

I have mentioned this time and time again - it’s the only assignment I work out for. I buy new sneakers, and I try to lose weight before the shoot. It’s the walk that starts in Camden, New Jersey, at Campbell’s Field and ends in Philadelphia.

Every walk starts with a short speech by Harry Giordano about the advancements in cancer research that City of Hope has helped make possible, helping people live longer. At this walk, sometimes I see people who are very weak and losing their hair, and the next year they are strong and vibrant. I’m seeing that some people who have fought the disease for a very long time, with the help of City of Hope, have been able to live longer than they might have when I first started photographing these walks for Harry.

In his speech each year he talks about more and more breakthroughs and more scientific success stories that help fight this disease.

And with this latest outbreak of Ebola, I really feel that somewhere, in some office like those of City of Hope, someone has some ideas on the chalkboard about how to rid that disease from our planet.

The second walk I’ve worked with the longest is The Hearing Loss Association of America’s Walk4Hearing. When I first started photographing this walk, the latest advancements were smaller and smaller hearing aids. I can see the technology advancing more and more year after year. It’s now getting to look like Star Trek’s technology. Being able to bypass the ear completely and send signals straight to the brain is just amazing to me. This had not even been conceived of when I first started working with Walk4Hearing.

Personally, I do not like the expression, “hearing impaired.” I think it should be called “hearing assisted,” and “hearing non-assisted.”

And personally, I do not think our government does as much as it should to help these organizations move forward. From the smallest to the outrageously large donations that people can make to these organizations, it all helps people right now, and in the future, and beyond the foreseeable future.

Thanks to the research that organizations like City of Hope supports, when parents of a young daughter learn that she has cancer, there is now more hope than ever before that someday they’ll be able to share the pride and joy of walking their daughter down the aisle on her wedding day.

And with events like the HLAA’s Walk4Hearing, when parents begin helping their young son live with his hearing loss, a few years down the line they’ll more than likely get a good laugh out of him when he hears how they sing his favorite pop song.

So in closing, it does, and it will get better.

Thank you for all the comments on my Joan Rivers story last month. Hope to hear from you guys again soon!

- Kevin S. Nash

Photo details: 2014 Walk4Hearing, Philadelphia Shipyard.