Purple is the awareness ribbon color for ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. You will see it pinned to lapels, printed on T-shirts, and shared across social media most visibly during May, which is ALS Awareness Month. The ribbon has become one of the more recognized symbols in the landscape of disease-awareness campaigns, though the movement behind it stretches far beyond a strip of colored fabric.
Why Purple and How the Color Was Chosen
ALS does not have a single, universally standardized body that assigns ribbon colors the way, say, a government agency assigns regulatory codes. The purple ribbon emerged from advocacy organizations and patient communities that adopted it as their symbol during the broader awareness-ribbon movement of the 1990s and early 2000s. By the time ALS awareness campaigns gained significant traction, purple had become firmly linked to the disease in public consciousness, and every major ALS organization now uses it in some form.
Purple sits in interesting company on the ribbon color chart. It is also associated with other conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, lupus, and epilepsy, each of which uses a distinct shade or pairs the purple with additional design elements. The ALS ribbon is typically a solid, medium purple. Some organizations pair it with a white stripe or add other design features to distinguish it, but the plain purple ribbon remains the default symbol most people encounter.
If you are buying or wearing a purple ribbon specifically for ALS, context usually does the work of clarifying which cause you are supporting. Wearing it during May or at an ALS fundraiser makes the association clear. Outside those contexts, a small printed label or an accompanying logo from an ALS organization helps avoid ambiguity with other purple-ribbon causes.
ALS Awareness Month and What Happens During May
May has been designated ALS Awareness Month in the United States for decades, and it is the time when advocacy activity peaks. You will see public buildings and landmarks lit in purple, local walks and fundraisers organized by ALS organizations, and social media campaigns urging people to learn about the disease and donate to research. Some cities issue formal proclamations, and media coverage of ALS tends to spike during this period.
The practical purpose of a dedicated awareness month goes beyond sentimentality. ALS is a relatively rare disease, affecting a small fraction of the population at any given time, which means it competes for attention and funding against far more common conditions. Concentrating advocacy efforts into a single month creates a critical mass of visibility that scattered year-round messaging cannot achieve. It also gives researchers and clinicians a window to publicize new findings and trial opportunities to a temporarily more attentive public.
Outside the United States, ALS awareness events follow different calendars. Global ALS Awareness Day falls on June 21, which broadens the window slightly and connects advocacy communities across borders. In some countries, the disease is better known as motor neurone disease (MND), and the awareness campaigns may use different color schemes or symbols while addressing the same condition.
The Ice Bucket Challenge Changed Everything
No discussion of ALS awareness is complete without the Ice Bucket Challenge. In the summer of 2014, a viral social media campaign asked people to dump a bucket of ice water over their heads on camera, share the video, and either donate to ALS research or nominate friends to do the same. It spread explosively from the United States to the rest of the world, pulling in celebrities, politicians, and millions of ordinary participants.
The campaign had an enormous and immediate impact on both public awareness and charitable donations for ALS research.1PubMed Central. The Ice Bucket Challenge: The public sector should get ready to promptly promote the sustained development of a system of medical care for and research into rare diseases In the United States alone, the ALS Association reported receiving over $115 million in donations during the peak weeks of the challenge, compared to about $2.8 million during the same period the previous year. Those funds went directly into research grants, some of which contributed to real scientific progress, including the identification of a gene called NEK1 as a contributor to ALS risk.
The Ice Bucket Challenge did something the purple ribbon alone had struggled to accomplish for years: it made ALS a household term. Before 2014, many people had heard of Lou Gehrig’s disease but could not have told you what it was or that it had an awareness ribbon at all. The challenge turned ALS from a niche concern into front-page news overnight.
Did the Buzz Last
The question researchers and advocates started asking almost immediately was whether the Ice Bucket Challenge would have any lasting effect or whether it was just another flash of internet enthusiasm. The evidence suggests a mix of both. A study using UK longitudinal data found that people who were exposed to the Ice Bucket Challenge were more likely to donate money and to volunteer in its aftermath. Among those who donated modest amounts, the campaign increased how much they gave. It also raised interpersonal trust, at least temporarily.
However, most of these effects faded within less than a year, supporting the prevailing view that viral social media campaigns tend to produce short-term behavioral changes rather than permanent shifts in giving habits.2MUNI ECON Working Papers. Social media charity campaigns and pro-social behavior. Evidence from the Ice Bucket Challenge The one exception was the amount donated among people who were already giving modestly, which held up longer. The takeaway for ALS advocacy is both encouraging and sobering: viral campaigns can inject enormous resources into a cause in a short window, but sustaining that momentum requires ongoing engagement that the ribbon, the awareness month, and year-round organizational outreach are designed to provide.
This pattern is not unique to ALS. Disease advocacy organizations across many conditions have found that public attention and research funding are deeply intertwined, and that sustained advocacy efforts reshape how funding is distributed over time. Research has shown that organized disease advocacy has changed which conditions receive more research dollars, altered how policymakers evaluate the worth of different health priorities, and introduced new ways of comparing diseases against one another for funding purposes.3American Sociological Review. Disease Politics and Medical Research Funding The purple ribbon and ALS Awareness Month are part of that broader ecosystem of advocacy.
What ALS Actually Does
If you are wearing the ribbon or considering a donation, understanding what the disease involves gives the symbol more weight. ALS attacks the motor neurons, the nerve cells that run from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles throughout your body. Both the upper motor neurons (in the brain) and the lower motor neurons (in the spinal cord and brainstem) degenerate, which is part of what makes ALS so devastating.4PubMed Central. Dynamics of Onset and Progression in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
As those neurons die, the muscles they control weaken and eventually stop working. Early symptoms depend on where the disease starts. Some people first notice weakness in a hand or foot, making it hard to grip objects or walk steadily. Others develop slurred speech or difficulty swallowing when the disease begins in the neurons controlling the mouth and throat. Over time, ALS spreads to affect more muscle groups, eventually impairing the ability to move, speak, eat, and breathe.
Most people with ALS live two to five years after their first symptoms appear, though a small minority survive much longer. The disease does not typically affect thinking or memory in its early stages, which means many patients are fully aware of their progressive loss of function. That combination of mental clarity and physical decline is part of what makes ALS so psychologically brutal for patients and families.
There is currently no cure. A small number of medications can slow the progression modestly or manage symptoms, but the disease remains fatal. This reality is why awareness campaigns and research funding matter so much to the ALS community. Every dollar raised and every moment of public attention represents a chance, however incremental, of accelerating the search for better treatments.
Who Gets ALS
ALS can strike anyone, but it is not evenly distributed across the population. It typically appears between the ages of 40 and 70, with an average onset around the late fifties. Men are somewhat more likely to develop it than women, though the gap narrows with age. The vast majority of cases, roughly 90 percent, are considered sporadic, meaning they occur without a clear family history. The remaining cases are familial, linked to inherited genetic mutations that researchers have been steadily identifying over the past two decades.
Tracking presymptomatic individuals who carry known genetic mutations has become an important area of ALS research, because studying the disease before symptoms appear could reveal early intervention windows that do not exist once motor neurons have already begun to die.4PubMed Central. Dynamics of Onset and Progression in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Several genes have been linked to familial ALS, and genetic testing is available for people with a family history of the disease, though deciding whether to get tested is a deeply personal choice given the lack of preventive treatments.
Beyond genetics, researchers have identified several environmental and occupational risk factors. Smoking, exposure to certain toxins, and intense physical activity have all been studied as possible contributors, though the evidence varies in strength. One population that has received particular attention is military veterans.
Veterans and ALS
Military service is associated with a meaningfully higher risk of developing ALS. A meta-analysis pooling data from nine studies found that military personnel had roughly 1.3 times the odds of developing ALS compared to civilians.5PubMed Central. Military service and related risk factors for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis That overall number, while significant, masks sharper risks tied to specific exposures. Veterans exposed to Agent Orange had about 2.8 times the odds of developing ALS, while those who used pyridostigmine bromide (a nerve agent pretreatment given to some service members) faced about 2.7 times the odds.
The risk also varied by era of service. Men who served during World War II had a notably elevated risk, about 1.6 times higher than expected, while those who served during the Korean or Vietnam Wars did not show a statistically significant increase in the same analysis.5PubMed Central. Military service and related risk factors for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis The reasons for these differences are not fully understood, though they may relate to the specific chemical exposures, physical demands, and infectious agents encountered in different theaters of war.
This connection has practical consequences. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recognizes ALS as a service-connected disease for any veteran who served at least 90 days of continuous active duty, regardless of when or where they served. That recognition means veterans diagnosed with ALS are eligible for disability compensation and health care benefits. The awareness ribbon takes on additional significance in veteran communities, where ALS fundraising events and support groups often overlap with military service organizations.
Other Symbols and Ways People Show Support
The purple ribbon is the most traditional symbol, but ALS awareness has expanded into a broader visual and cultural vocabulary. The Ice Bucket Challenge, though it peaked in 2014, left a lasting imprint on how people think about ALS activism. Some organizations continue to hold annual ice bucket events as fundraisers, and the imagery of the bucket pour has become an unofficial second symbol of the cause.
Purple wristbands, car magnets, and window decals are common year-round. During May, you might see purple porch lights, purple nail polish campaigns, or purple-themed bake sales organized by local ALS chapters. Some families affected by ALS create personalized awareness efforts, tying the purple ribbon to a loved one’s name or story. These personal campaigns often raise significant money through crowdfunding platforms and social media.
Professional sports have also become a venue for ALS awareness. Lou Gehrig’s connection to the New York Yankees means baseball has a particular historical tie to the disease, and annual Lou Gehrig Day events in Major League Baseball feature purple wristbands and on-field tributes. Other sports leagues have hosted ALS awareness games or partnered with ALS organizations for fundraising drives, extending the ribbon’s visibility into arenas where millions of viewers encounter it.
When Ribbons Share Colors
One source of confusion for people looking up ALS awareness is that purple is a crowded color in the ribbon world. Alzheimer’s disease, pancreatic cancer, epilepsy, Crohn’s disease, lupus, and several other conditions all use purple or purple-adjacent ribbon colors. This overlap is not accidental or careless. There are only so many easily distinguishable colors, and the ribbon system grew organically rather than being centrally coordinated. No single authority assigns ribbon colors, so multiple organizations independently settled on similar shades.
Some conditions have tried to differentiate by using specific shades. Alzheimer’s tends toward a darker purple, while pancreatic cancer uses a distinct purple shade and sometimes adds other colors. ALS organizations generally stick to a medium, true purple. But in practice, a purple ribbon on its own does not always clearly identify which cause the wearer supports.
This ambiguity has led some advocates to push for more distinctive visual identities beyond the ribbon itself. Logos, hashtags, and branded merchandise do a better job of associating a specific symbol with a specific disease than a solid-color ribbon can. The ALS community has been relatively successful at this, partly because the Ice Bucket Challenge gave it a second, highly distinctive visual identity that no other disease can claim. When someone sees a purple ribbon next to an ice bucket, there is no ambiguity about the cause.
ALS Research and Where Funding Goes
Awareness campaigns are ultimately about more than symbols. They exist to channel attention and money toward research that could change outcomes for patients. ALS research funding has grown over the past decade, driven in part by the visibility that the Ice Bucket Challenge and sustained advocacy have generated. Federal funding through the National Institutes of Health has increased, and private foundations have expanded their grant programs.
The research landscape has shifted meaningfully. Gene therapy approaches, antisense oligonucleotide treatments, and stem cell therapies are all in various stages of clinical testing. Several new drugs have entered clinical trials or received accelerated approval in recent years, representing a pace of therapeutic development that would have been hard to imagine two decades ago. The identification of genetic targets like C9orf72, SOD1, and the Ice Bucket Challenge-funded NEK1 gene has opened doors that were previously closed.
Still, ALS remains underfunded relative to more common diseases, and the gap between what researchers could investigate and what they can afford to investigate is wide. Disease advocacy organizations have argued that the rarity of ALS should not determine the level of investment in finding treatments, and organized advocacy has demonstrably shifted how funding bodies weigh disease priorities.3American Sociological Review. Disease Politics and Medical Research Funding Every purple ribbon, every awareness month event, and every viral campaign contributes to that ongoing effort to keep ALS visible in a crowded field of competing health priorities.
Practical Tips for Supporting ALS Awareness
If you want to do more than wear the ribbon, the most direct action is donating to an ALS research organization. The ALS Association and the Muscular Dystrophy Association are the largest in the United States, but smaller regional organizations and research-specific foundations also fund important work. Before donating, checking a charity’s research-to-overhead spending ratio through a watchdog like Charity Navigator can help you feel confident your money is going where it matters.
Volunteering with local ALS chapters is another option. Many chapters need help organizing events, visiting patients, or providing respite care for families. ALS patients often become increasingly isolated as the disease progresses and mobility declines, so even simple social visits can make a meaningful difference.
If you are on social media, sharing accurate information about ALS during May or on June 21 (Global ALS Awareness Day) extends the reach of awareness campaigns without costing anything. The Ice Bucket Challenge demonstrated that social media exposure does increase donations and volunteering, even if the effect is temporary.2MUNI ECON Working Papers. Social media charity campaigns and pro-social behavior. Evidence from the Ice Bucket Challenge A post that educates someone about ALS for the first time might be the thing that leads them to donate, volunteer, or simply understand what a friend or neighbor with the disease is going through.