THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 20, 1996 TAG: 9601200274
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters has received a $1.5 million gift that will help research into children's health.
The gift will endow a chair for research at Eastern Virginia Medical School's department of pediatrics, housed primarily at CHKD.
The money, given anonymously, is a boon at a time when it is getting harder to find research dollars, said Dr. Raymond D. Adelman. Adelman is senior vice president for academic affairs at CHKD, as well as chairman of the medical school's department of pediatrics.
Requests to National Institutes of Health, a primary source of government research funding, have become extremely competitive, said Adelman. And private sources, such as drug company grants, are usually interested in paying for studies on treatments, not answering basic medical questions.
But, says Adelman, research into basic science is still needed.
``If we hadn't had basic research, this whole hospital would be a giant polio ward,'' he said.
An endowed chair also offers the benefit of guaranteed funding year after year. The $1.5 million is put in some type of interest-bearing account. The interest goes to pay the salary of a researcher or to support a particular program.
This gift will create the medical school's first endowed chair in the department of pediatrics.
Hospital and school officials haven't decided yet whether the chair will go to someone already working at CHKD or whether it will be used to attract someone new.
Researchers there now are investigating immunizations, the benefits of breast milk, diarrheal disease, medicine for children with cancer, and management of asthma. They also are looking to improve survival of infants in the hospital's neonatal intensive care units by studying things like lung development.
Although CHKD and the medical school are technically separate institutions, their functions overlap. All full-time faculty members in the school's department of pediatrics work out of the hospital or the Center for Pediatric Research, an institution run by both groups. by CNB