Stories of Giving

The Eagles Autism Foundation has awarded $400,000 to a UMass Medical School research team led by David M. Cochran, MD, PhD, to study a biomarker-driven pharmacological treatment for autism spectrum disorder.

Wagner Automotive Group of Shrewsbury has donated the lease of a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van to assist UMMS Vaccine Corps volunteers in delivering COVID-19 vaccines to special populations in Massachusetts.

Thanks to a grant from DCU for Kids, the charitable arm of Digital Federal Credit Union, Jessica Griffin of the UMMS Child Trauma Training Center can develop video training tools for parents.

In mid-May 2011, the late Massachusetts Gov. Paul Cellucci kicked off what was perhaps the most important campaign of his life: a fundraising effort at UMMS to fight the devastating disease that would eventually take his life: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Generous grant supports services provided by the Foster Child Evaluation Services (FaCES) program at UMass Medical School to area families

In a year in which issues of racial equity/social justice rose to the foreground of the national consciousness, Imoigele Aisiku, MD’97, MBA, MSCR, established an endowed chair at UMMS to support efforts in health equity and diversity.

School of Medicine alumnus Mark Dowell and his wife Caryn strive to make a difference wherever, and whenever, they can. Recently, they established an endowed scholarship at UMMS.

There is a graceful harmony at play as Doranne and Randall “Randy” Hudson, MD’78, lead by example, endowing a new fund at UMass Medical School to foster leadership among medical students.

The Lewis family has supported the ALS research of Robert H. Brown Jr., DPhil, MD, at UMass Medical School since 2013, when they launched a foundation and its annual musical event, ChrisFest. Recently, they generously gifted funds to boost the Brown lab’s latest ground-breaking endeavor: a series of novel clinical trials to treat forms of ALS through gene silencing therapeutics that could one day become commercially available medications.

Certain scientific achievements, such as the coronavirus vaccines, can break through quickly when fueled by funding in the millions. Yet most research efforts are decades-long explorations, requiring many years of funding support. As lab costs and the number of investigators vying for grants continue to increase, community-based funding from organizations like the Fraternal Order of Eagles has been vital.