- Grantee:
- UCSF Foundation
Finding Cures for Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease
The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center has long ranked among the U.S.’s top ten hospitals (according to US News & World Report, 2009; for eight consecutive years it has been in the top ten). Adding to its worldwide reputation in cardiovascular and cancer work is UCSF’s new $1.1 billion Mission Bay campus, one of the largest biomedical education and research campuses in the U.S., that also is providing vibrancy and jobs to a revitalised section of San Francisco.
To optimise the length and quality of life, UCSF staff envisions new ways of integrating research with clinical care that span the full spectrum from prevention to long-term care and hospice. In addition, UCSF is capitalising on its proximity to Silicon Valley by incorporating many breakthroughs in information technology (IT) to improve the quality and reduce the cost of health care.
Founding Chairman Chuck Feeney has championed UCSF’s efforts to find cures for the U.S.’s No. 1 and 2 killers by encouraging our Board to give a total of $270 million for three buildings: the Helen Diller Family Cancer Research Building; the Cardiovascular Research Institute, scheduled to open in 2011; and the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay, planned for 2014.
“These facilities will allow us to advance to the next levels of research, training and patient care,” says Mark R. Laret, Chief Executive Officer of UCSF Medical Center. “Our hospital will have the latest IT interface, which will enable every patient, in effect, to be part of our research and will increase our doctors’ ability to improve care faster.”
“The Mission Bay campus in its present form might not have existed without Chuck’s foresight,” says Regis Kelly, former Vice Chancellor of UCSF and now Director of the California Institute of Quantitative Biosciences at Mission Bay. “Each of his three gifts was instrumental in both obtaining the University Regent’s approval for that particular project and in encouraging other philanthropists to step forward.”
