2024 has been a year of change at Endeavor Health, though our mission has stayed the same. Together, we “help everyone in our communities be their best,” and this is made possible thanks in large part to the generosity of our neighbors like you.
NorthShore Hospitals Foundation is the local philanthropy office that raises donor support for programs and clinical departments at the Endeavor Health NorthShore Hospitals—Evanston, Glenbrook, Highland Park and Skokie—and for the Endeavor Health Research Institute. We are delighted to share with you some incredible highlights from this year. Our generous donors helped make this happen!
Groundbreaking research and personalized medicine
The Endeavor Health Research Institute has conducted more than 550 active clinical trials and more than 700 clinical research studies in areas ranging from cardiology, oncology, genetics and infectious disease to patient quality, safety and experience. We’re also proud to be home to the largest primary care-embedded clinical genomics program in the nation. While government and private grants initially fund these projects, individual donor support provides the additional funding required to take this vital work even further and bring the findings more immediately to our patients.
Endeavor Health is among the first healthcare providers in the nation to offer groundbreaking clinical-grade polygenic risk score (PRS) testing for a broad range of conditions. We’re partnering with GenomicMD, a CLIA-certified organization dedicated to personalizing healthcare through precision medicine and to providing patients and their physicians with an assessment of lifetime genomic risk for cardiovascular, cardiometabolic, neurologic, oncologic, urologic and other common diseases.
The PRS testing perfectly complements our comprehensive Personalized Medicine Program, an area of support that’s of particular interest to our donors! In fact, the newly created Davis Family Center for Preventive Genomics, made possible by a generous philanthropic gift from Bill and Karen Davis, will expand this commitment to personalized medicine by providing patients with more proactive information about their genomics so prevention and screening care plans can be tailored to their precise needs.
Cardiovascular excellence
With the opening of the new Endeavor Heath Cardiovascular Institute (CVI) pavilion at Glenbrook Hospital, patients can access leading-edge, comprehensive heart care as well as innovative clinical trials and research in a single landing place, from diagnosis to treatment. Under the roof of the CVI pavilion, our physicians, fellows and residents lead research teams to uncover new information about heart disease. These findings are then put to work for patients in real time.
A very generous gift from the Pepper Family Foundation will further advance clinical and research excellence and education in our CVI. The gift establishes the Pepper Family Foundation Endowed Chair of Cardiovascular Excellence and Education, with Amit K. Pursnani, MD, MSc, FACC, FSCCT, Director of the Endeavor Health Cardiovascular Fellowship Program, appointed as the inaugural chair holder. Dr. Pursnani was foundational in launching two significant fellowship training programs: our cardiology fellowship program and our advanced cardiac imaging fellowship program, both of which attract over 300 applications each year.
Inspiring the next generation of healthcare professionals
In addition to our esteemed fellowship and residency programs in partnership with the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, Endeavor Health also offers an array of internship and educational programs to inspire the next generation of healthcare professionals.
One example is Endeavor Health’s Personalized Medicine (PMed) Summer Camp offered by the Research Institute. Unlike many traditional internships, the PMed Summer Camp provides a rare and rewarding opportunity for students to conduct real genomic translational research and complete a published manuscript.
The PMed Summer Camp is open to all students—high school, college, graduate school and medical school—and the hope is to broaden awareness of the novel internship and to attract even more students from a broad range of backgrounds, including minorities and those from underserved communities. This year’s research projects explored assessing personalized risks of genetic mutations related to hereditary breast and ovarian cancers and Lynch syndrome-related cancers, and refining risk factors for lung cancer based on smoking status and polygenic risk scores.
Each of the highlights shared here is truly made possible through donor support. Gifts of every size directly provide flexible, reliable funding to our leaders and experts to propel their work further. As a nonprofit hospital system, Endeavor Health relies on donor support to bolster our patient support services, new research projects and lifesaving clinical procedures. We are truly powered by giving!
Want to learn more about how you can make an impact as a donor? Reach out to Kaitlin Czurylo, Director of Annual Giving, at 224.364.7607 or kczurylo@northshore.org. She’s here to answer questions and eager to chat about everything happening at Endeavor Health NorthShore Hospitals!
