Our Mission:

Improve health.

Improve care.

• Innovations in care that reduce the side effects of treatment and which focus on the entirety of the patient experience.

• Clinical advances that reduce the stress of being sick, such as improvements in technology that allow patients to share and receive information more efficiently.  

• Improvements in physician training, which will emphasize work-life balance, the need to listen closely to patients, and an orientation toward treating patients as partners in care.

• Advances in integrative approaches to treating disease.

• Actions that help patients and caregivers navigate the medical system and gain access to quality healthcare.

At this time, we will not fund basic research. We also are less likely to support projects that are focused on a single disease. And while the bulk of our giving in the past has focused on reducing medical errors, we are looking to expand our giving beyond this vital area.

Examples of past giving

We realize that our areas of interest are varied and open to interpretation.  To provide more guidance around what will be funded, consider the following projects that we have supported in the past:

Society for the Improvement of Diagnosis in Medicine

We were an early funder of the Society, which has highlighted the impact of misdiagnosis and started a movement toward improving medical diagnoses. In particular, we supported the creation of the Coalition to Improve Diagnosis, a collaboration of more than 40 leading healthcare organizations working together to ensure that diagnoses are accurate and are communicated to patients and caregivers in a timely fashion. 

In addition, we funded a campaign, alongside the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which sought to increase awareness of the incidence and impact of medical errors.

Weizmann Institute of Science

This grant funded the Weizmann Institute’s Bench to Bedside Project, supporting the collaboration of physicians and scientists in integrating existing databases to create an interface that physicians can use to analyze data. And in 2022, we provided funding for integrating artificial intelligence in biomedical research through Prof. Shalev Itzkovitz’s efforts to leverage big data to combat autoimmune disease.

National Academy of Medicine

We supported the National Academy of Medicine’s (formerly known as the Institute of Medicine) 2015 report Improving Diagnosis in Health Care. This report showed how improving diagnosis is a key outcome of quality healthcare. It also showed the prevalence and impact of misdiagnoses. 

In addition, we made a grant to the National Academy to examine the scientific evidence regarding the causes of clinician burnout as well as the consequences for both clinicians and patients.

MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING CANCER CENTER

We recently made two grants to MSK. The first grant explores factors that may predict treatment response in people with high-grade serous ovarian cancer, and the second investigates whether lower dosages of radiation can be used for head and neck cancers.

These are only a few of the projects we have funded.  In the past, we have also supported the Bravewell Collaborative, which worked to advance integrative medicine and shift the focus of our health care system to include prevention, health maintenance, early intervention, and patient-centered care.