4/29/10 - Ames Stores Foundation Establishes IBD Endowment With $1 Million Donation To Connecticut Children’s
HARTFORD, Conn.— The Ames Stores Foundation has made a generous $1 million donation to the Division of Digestive Diseases, Hepatology and Nutrition at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.
The donation will establish the Ames Stores Foundation Endowment in support of Connecticut Children’s Center for Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease. The Center was established in 2006 to provided state-of-the-art care, treatment, and cutting edge research aimed at improving the lives of children with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. The Center has become the largest clinical program for children with IBD in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Western Massachusetts, and provides patients with access to the very latest clinical therapies, including the promising national trials of new biological therapies.
In 2002, Connecticut Children’s also started the Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease Collaborative Research Group. The group includes 22 pediatric centers across North America whose focus is to examine data on newly-diagnosed IBD patients under the age of 16 and to advance the care for these children through promising clinical and translational research.
“The Ames Store Foundation Endowment will be a lasting and perpetual legacy for the department store chain at Connecticut Children’s, and a promise of hope for future generations of children with IBD in Connecticut and throughout the world,” said Jeffrey Hyams, MD, head of the Division of Digestive Diseases, Hepatology and Nutrition.
Joseph Ettore, the former CEO of Ames Department Stores, said the chain had more than 20 locations in Connecticut in addition to its corporate offices. Ames is no stranger to Connecticut Children’s as it regularly donated toys and financial resources for the Medical Center.
“It was this long-standing relationship that led the Ames Stores Foundation to make this legacy gift to create an endowment to support the Center for Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease and the work of Dr. Jeffrey Hyams and his team,” Ettore said. “It is a tribute to the more than 2,000 Ames employees who lived in Connecticut, many of whom were touched by Connecticut Children’s through their families and through their own volunteer service.”
One such employee is Ellen Oland, the former director of marketing communications at Ames Department Stores. Her own family was touched by Dr. Hyams’ work and to this day they are grateful for his incredible care and his commitment to making the road smoother for other families who must travel it.
“My husband Mark and I are longtime supporters of the important work of Dr. Hyams,” Oland said. “We’re so proud that the Ames Stores Foundation has chosen to support such an important program, and I know from firsthand experience, that this endowment will continue to have a lasting impact on the children and families affected by IBD.”
The Ames Store Foundation Endowment will help purchase a bone mineral density scanner to support active investigations that are focused on links between malnutrition and its effect on bone loss. Connecticut Children’s researchers are aggressively working to trace those indicators to the earliest possible stages of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Access to this equipment will have a significant impact on the quality of treatment provided to children by helping to reverse delays and placing them back on their genetically determined growth schedule.
The endowment also will fund clinical investigations, improvements to clinical services and other basic science projects at the Center for Pediatric IBD as determined by Dr. Hyams and the senior faculty. In addition to having the endowment recognized in signage at the Medical Center, the Ames Stores Foundation Endowment will be acknowledged in scientific papers, publications, conferences and in all publicity related to the work that has been made possible with the support of the endowment.
The Division of Digestive Diseases, Hepatology, and Nutrition has been designated as a Premier Program at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. The designation as a Premier Program recognizes the superb clinical care provided by the Division, its commitment to basic, translational and clinical research to improve the lives of children with digestive diseases, and its dedication to innovation in education, training, and continuous quality improvement.
