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University of Wisconsin
SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Take a building. Eliminate walls to encourage interactions that produce the "ah hah" moments. Add scientists and physician researchers. With open laboratories half a football field long, shared equipment and connected social spaces, the towers of the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research encourage serendipity as researchers and physician scientists constantly cross paths and share coffee and ideas. Perspectives shift. A spark ignites. Discoveries are made. This is where the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health scientists and clinicians will collaborate to discover new treatments that improve the quality of patients' lives and find cures for diseases that have been incurable. With the UW Hospitals and Clinics next door, scientists are keenly aware of the patients who will benefit from their work. Physicians, in turn, will easily bring clinical insights back to the lab, spurring new directions for research.
Healthy babies. County health rankings. Childhood obesity. When the University of Wisconsin Medical School changed its name in 2005 to the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, it made a commitment to promote well-being in communities and build bridges between physicians, public health workers and community leaders to improve lives in Wisconsin and around the world. Our dedication to public health means graduates, will be better prepared to deal with complex, community wellness challenges. We are expanding crossdisciplinary research as scientists, public health professionals, community and academic clinicians cooperate and collaborate to solve central problems, such as inner city infant death, in all their complexity. Through the Wisconsin Partnership Fund, we will continue to forge important public health ties to communities across the state.
INVEST IN HEALTHY COMMUNITIES
“We were the unhealthiest county in the state, but we turned it around. The County Health Rankings report was an effective tool in mobilizing and convincing policy makers, business people, faith-based providers, educators and the community that we all have a stake in the health of our population.� Barb Theis, RN Juneau County public health officer
Juneau County’s alarming health risks were made clear when the county landed at the bottom of the UW Population Health Institute’s County Health Rankings for Wisconsin in 2006. Pregnant women smoked at double the state average; 40 percent of residents had not seen a dentist in the last year; 27 percent were obese and people tended to die much too young. County Public Health Officer Barb Theis used the report to rally local leaders to make changes that are improving the rankings. They opened a dental clinic for low income clients. And they’re working to add jobs, keep students in school, teach pregnant women the dangers of smoking and provide access to medical care on a sliding-fee scale. “The report ignited a spark,” Theis says. “It became the beginning of change and opportunity.” The rankings measure population health and the factors that influence it, from obesity to graduation rates. In February 2010, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Population Health Institute issued a first-ever report for every U.S. county. To learn more about the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s community health initiatives visit www.med.wisc.edu To make a gift online, visit www.med.wisc.edu/gift. For more information about gift opportunities, contact Marje Murray at marje.murray@uwfoundation.wisc.edu or 608-265-2922.
INVEST IN TOMORROW’S CURES
“Each of the sciences can live alone, and physicians can live alone, but we are empowered to discover better treatments and therapies when we work together.” Robert Jeraj, PhD Professor of medical physics, human oncology and biomedical engineering
Although they all fight prostate cancer, medical oncologist Glenn Liu, medical physicist Robert Jeraj and radiochemist Jamey Weichert worked 1 and one-half miles or 30 minutes apart before they landed next door to each other in Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research (WIMR). Weichert and Jeraj are pushing to develop new contrast agents and better techniques to image cancer lesions. Both hope that their work will improve our ability to not only see small cancer lesions, but also to assess a patient’s early response to therapy. Liu develops new anti-angiogenic agents that prevent the growth of blood vessels that feed tumors. He oversees patient tests of new therapies and says advanced imaging can quickly show how targeted therapies affect cancer growth. Together, the scientists are using their tools to design more efficient and informative clinical trials. Better imaging helps determine which drugs should be prioritized for clinical development. “It may, eventually, provide an early indicator of which patients will benefit from continuing a particular therapy or, more importantly, which patients will not benefit, allowing us to modify their treatment plan accordingly,” Liu says. “We work together daily, so we can achieve this goal.” To learn more about research collaboration in WIMR, visit www.med.wisc.edu/research. To make a gift online, visit www.med.wisc.edu/gift. For more information about gift opportunities, contact Marje Murray at marje.murray@uwfoundation.wisc.edu or 608-265-2922.
HELP FIX BROKEN HEARTS
“If you have a heart failure patient who is in dire straits — and there are never enough donor hearts for transplantation — we may be able to make heart cells from the patient’s skin cells, and use them to repair heart muscle.” Tim Kamp, MD, PhD Associate professor of medicine and of physiology
Cardiologist Tim Kamp knows what it means to mend broken hearts. In his medical practice, he helps patients survive heart failure. In his UW-Madison laboratory, he was the first to reprogram skin cells into beating heart muscle cells. The American Heart Association called the discovery one of the 10 most important research advances for cardiovascular disease and stroke in 2009. “It's a very mysterious and complicated dance to get these cells to go from skin cells to stem cells to heart cells,” he says. His breakthrough opens the possibility that scientists may be able one day to mend your broken heart with your skin cells. “The excitement is in understanding how we can translate basic research into patient care,” Kamp says. “There’s nothing better than seeing you might have helped someone.” To learn more about research at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health research programs, visit www.med.wisc.edu and click on Research. To make a gift online, visit www.med.wisc.edu/gift. For more information about gift opportunities, contact Marje Murray at marje.murray@uwfoundation.wisc.edu or 608-265-2922.
COMBAT CHILDHOOD OBESIT Y
“I think every day about how critical pediatric obesity is. And I think about how we can change it.” Aaron Carrel, MD Associate professor of pediatrics
Pediatric endocrinologist Aaron Carrel builds bridges: connecting communities and the UW-Madison, collaborating with nutritionists and master gardeners, establishing across-campus ties. His mission: To combat childhood obesity. A third of U.S. children are obese or overweight, putting them at risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep problems and depression. “I see the value in bringing people together to work on big issues like pediatric obesity,” Carrel says. He’s measuring how environment contributes to obesity at Milwaukee’s Bruce Guadalupe Community School and looking for ways to improve it. In Stoughton’s River Bluff Middle School, he showed that bringing everyday exercise such as bicycling into gym classes improved fitness. He helped create the UW Pediatric Fitness Clinic. “It’s great working with UW athletes and helping them try to win championships,” says Randy Clark, an exercise physiologist in the Pediatric Fitness Clinic. “But with these kids, you’re changing lives.” To learn more about Carrel’s research and other SMPH public health initiatives, visit www.med.wisc.edu. To make a gift online, visit www.med.wisc.edu/gift. For more information about gift opportunities, contact Nancy Francisco-Welke at nancy.francisco-welke@uwfoundation. wisc.edu or 608-263-5960.
INVEST IN THE FUTURE
Planned giving allows you to integrate philanthropy into your overall financial, tax and estate planning to maximize benefits for you and your family and the University. These are gifts that you make today but are received by the University of Wisconsin Foundation in the future. Some, such as will bequests, are straightforward. Others are more complex, providing current tax benefits as well as life income for you, someone you designate or both.
You will find many opportunities for deferred giving: ●
Will bequests
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Revocable trusts
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Retirement plan assets
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Life insurance
Life-income planned gifts include a variety of trusts and annuities that allow you to transfer cash or property to the Foundation in exchange for an annual payout for yourself or beneficiaries you choose or for a specific number of years. You can make several kinds of life-income planned gifts, including: ●
charitable remainder trusts, which provide an annual income for you or other beneficiaries
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pooled income funds, in which two or more donors irrevocably transfer property but maintain an interest in annual proceeds
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charitable lead trusts, which provide income for a campus unit for a specific number of years before the principal is returned
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charitable gift annuities, which include life income payments
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real property subject to a life estate, which allows you to use the donated property for the remainder of your life
For more information, please contact the University of Wisconsin Foundation Office of Planned Giving at 608-263-4545 or uwf@uwfoundation.wisc.edu.
BUILD HOPE
“Work that takes place in this building will translate into every nook and cranny of the state, embodying the Wisconsin Idea.� Robert N. Golden, MD Dean, School of Medicine and Public Health
With the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research, the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health embraces a new way of exploring science. Organized by disease instead of department, basic, translational and clinical scientists work together to quickly move discoveries to patient care. The seven-story East Tower is home to the UW Carbone Cancer Center and Advanced Imaging and Radiation facilities. The Center Tower is in the 2011-2013 Wisconsin state budget and has received $15 million from the National Institutes of Health. About the Center Tower Where: 1111 Highland Avenue on the UW Health Sciences Campus, adjacent to UW Hospital and Clinics Research floors: Seven Assignable square feet: 175,000 (each floor a football field long) Expected research: Cardiovascular diseases, neuroscience, regenerative medicine and ophthalmology Expected faculty: 90 investigative groups Cost: $134 million Funding: State/federal/private partnership To learn more about the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research, visit www.med.wisc.edu/research. To make a gift online, visit www. med.wisc.edu/gift. For more information about gift opportunities, contact Marje Murray at marje.murray@uwfoundation.wisc.edu or 608-265-2922.
Located at one of the top three research universities in the country, the UW School of Medicine and Public Health is improving health in Wisconsin and the world: • Transforming stem cells into beating heart muscle • Increasing pre-natal care to Milwaukee central city teens • Placing third- and fourth-year medical students in rural communities • Moving a compound to detect and treat tumors into clinical trials • Measuring the health of every county in the nation The School is dedicated to transforming medicine by integrating biomedical research and traditional medical education with the health needs of whole populations. The Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research, designed for interaction not isolation, opens doors for new interactions, new synergy and new discoveries that will improve lives. Combining public health and medicine creates a new model of health care that pushes discoveries out of the lab and into patient care and community health. Tomorrow's doctors, researchers and public health practitioners are learning new ways to practice medicine. With your help, we will build research space that stimulates collaboration and innovation, develop new educational resources to serve all of Wisconsin and reach out to answer community health needs. To learn more about the School of Medicine and Public Health, visit www.med.wisc.edu.
To learn more about the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, visit www.med.wisc.edu. To make a gift online, visit www.medwisc.edu/gift.
For more information about giving opportunities, please contact Marje Murray at 608-265-2922 or marje.murray@uwfoundation.wisc.edu
or
Nancy Francisco-Welke at 608-263-5960 or nancy.francisco-welke@uwfoundationwisc.edu at the University of Wisconsin Foundation, the official fundraising and gift-receiving organization for the UW-Madison.
University of Wisconsin
SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Photography by Todd Brown and Chris Frazee/Media Solutions, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health; and Jeff Miller/University
of Wisconsin-Madison.