St. Baldrick’s infrastructure grants are designed for one reason: treat more children on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure. Thanks to the support of St. Baldrick’s Foundation donors, these grants, totaling nearly $1.5 million this cycle, will help treat more children on clinical trials. In this spirit, these grants primarily provide support for Clinical Research Associates.
The grand total of grants made by the foundation since 2005: $282 million. That’s an outstanding number – and we could not have done it without the support of you, our donors. Thank you!
Below, we’ve listed 25 institutions that are receiving infrastructure grants in this cycle. In this blog post, we highlight four of these grants – to help paint a fuller picture of what these grants make possible.
Dr. Thomas McLean with patient, Allie, at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Solving a Geographic Problem: Clinical Trials in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas
State-of-the-art treatment through a clinical trial is often most accessible in bigger cities, creating a challenge for rural areas. The Rio Grande Valley of Texas falls into that geographically challenged category; the Valley’s nearly 1.4 million residents normally turn to large cities like Houston and San Antonio for major medical care. But getting care in those cities requires a long drive. This grant supports the Vannie E. Cook Jr. Children’s Cancer and Hematology Clinic in McAllen, Texas, affiliated with the Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. It will fund a Clinical Research Nurse to ensure more children in the Valley can be treated on clinical trials closer to home.
The Emergence of Integrative and Supportive Care Oncology
In another hospital in Texas, Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, an infrastructure grant will help the hospital by funding an Integrative and Supportive Care Oncology Coordinator. Integrative oncology, which is designed to complement traditional cancer treatments, aims to provide care to patients through a range of mind and body practices, natural products, and lifestyle modifications from various traditions.
Attention to Long-term Survivorship Issues
A grant received by Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans, Louisiana sheds additional light on the issues faced by survivors of cancer.
Estimates are that 99 percent of childhood cancer survivors will face health challenges as adults, and clinical trials, which often involve experimental or unproven treatments as the best chance of a patient’s survival, could be responsible for late effects. In New Orleans, the grant helps to fund the Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer and Survivor program, the first and only one of its kind in the region.
Behind the Scenes Work Is Also Important to Clinical Trials
Doctors and nurses are busy treating patients, but the administrative, clinical, and data management work behind the scenes is also quite important. Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, will use its grant to pay for a Clinical Research Associate, doing the vital work of ensuring that the patients are properly enrolled and the information managed to increase the odds of a successful treatment plan for patients.
Complete List of Infrastructure Grant Recipients
- Albany Medical College, Albany, N.Y.
- Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
- Bon Secours St. Francis Health System, Greenville, S.C.
- Children’s Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.
- Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters, Norfolk, Va.
- Cook Children’s Medical Center, Fort Worth, Texas
- Dell Children’s Medical Center, Austin, Texas
- El Paso Children’s Hospital, El Paso, Texas
- Hackensack University Medical Center part of Hackensack Meridian Health Children’s Care Transformation Service, Hackensack, N.J.
- HSHS St. Vincent Cancer Research Institute, Green Bay, Wis.
- Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, Calif.
- Ochsner Clinic Foundation, New Orleans, La.
- Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, Orlando, Fla.
- SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital, St. Louis, Mo.
- SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, N.Y.
- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, N.C.
- UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, Oakland, Calif.
- University of California San Diego, La Jolla, Calif.
- University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
- University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Okla.
- Valley Children’s Healthcare, Madera, Calif.
- Vannie E. Cook Jr. Children’s Cancer and Hematology Clinic affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine, McAllen, Texas
- Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Va.
- Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, Winston-Salem, N.C.
- Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Visit the St. Baldrick’s Grants page for more information.
As we continue to work toward a future where childhood cancer is a thing of the past, we’re hopeful that the work you help to fund can empower these institutions and their researchers to keep striving toward new and exciting breakthroughs.
We’re not done until all kids with cancer have their best chance at a long, healthy life. Join us and help fund the next round of grants.
Join us today and #DFYchildhoodCancers!
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