Dear Friends,
This fall marks a special milestone for Children’s Fund donors. Ten years ago, the Children’s Fund began directing support to the Stanford Child Health Research Institute (CHRI). Since then, you and your fellow Children’s Fund donors have provided more than $16 million in funding for innovative child and maternal health research. That is incredible!
Thanks to your support, we have been able to award more than 375 research grants to the Stanford community since 2008. These researchers span diverse disciplines from mechanical engineering to maternal-fetal medicine, but they all have one goal in common: improving the lives of mothers, babies, and children in our community and around the world.
One example of the difference your support has made: Post-doctoral research fellow Marko Jakovljevic, PhD, is developing an ultrasound device to help us better understand the vascular system in newborns’ brains. It could be a wonderful new tool for our neonatologists caring for our tiniest patients.
In other exciting news, on Friday, November 16, we will host the inaugural CHRI Symposium, honoring this year’s funding awardees. Please join us! Our hope is that the event will foster a sense of community among our researchers and supporters like you. Learn more at med.stanford.edu/chri.
There is so much to celebrate, but also so much more work to be done to advance children’s health research. Because of you, each year we are able to fund 30 percent of the researchers who apply for CHRI grants. As government-funded grants become harder and harder to obtain, we hope your continued support will help us fill in the gap and fund even more of the innovative scientists whose ideas may lead to better care and cures.
We cannot thank you enough for your support of the Children’s Fund and we look forward to what the future holds for child and maternal health.
Best wishes,
Mary B. Leonard, MD, MSCE
Arline and Pete Harman Professor and Chair, Department of Pediatrics
Director, Stanford Child Health Research Institute
Stanford School of Medicine
Adalyn Jay Physician-In-Chief,
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford
This article originally appeared in the Fall 2018 issue of the Children's Fund Update.