By Beth Bales
Will you give on Giving Tuesday? This will be the SVS Foundation’s third year marking the annual global day of giving— Dec. 1, this year—which follows Thanksgiving and the big shopping days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
The day is set during the holiday season, when many people concentrate their charitable giving. With a very low-key start in 2018, with just $350 in contributions, donations picked up in 2019, with 20 donors contributing nearly $2,000. Hopes are high this year for about 2 ½ times that amount, said Peter Lawrence, MD, Foundation chair.
Here are some examples of how donations to the SVS Foundation—on any day of the year—are improving patient care: Through an SVS Foundation Community Awareness and Prevention Project grant, Leigh Ann O’Banion, MD, is helping amputees in the Fresno, California, area become ambulatory more quickly. The project, which has been interrupted by COVID-19, has so far been successful.
The Foundation grants of C. Keith Ozaki, MD, have helped him study the way blood vessels respond to physical force and the way food consumption prior to surgery affects the response to surgical trauma.
Rural patients were able to “see” Misti Humphries, MD, via telemedicine because of an SVS Foundation Clinical Research Seed Grant. One of her thoracic outlet syndrome patients avoided a five-hour round trip but could still show the staff her progress, raising her arms up in triumph.
Omid Jazaeri, MD, spent a year visiting centers with advanced imaging and MR technologies. The ability to better understand aortopathies as they pertain to structure, stress and physiology of blood flow will help him treat his own patients more successfully. “We simply can’t fix what we can’t see or understand,” he said.
Hundreds of SVS members over the years have poured time and effort into studying diabetes, peripheral arterial disease (PAD), vascular remodeling, venous thrombus formation and other topics—all to treat or prevent vascular diseases or reduce their severity.
“My mantra is: ‘More money, more mission,’” said Foundation chair Peter F. Lawrence, MD. “With more money, we can fund more grants, we can fund more science into the hows and whys of vascular disease, we can fund more community projects that educate the public about what vascular disease is and how we can help them. Please help the Foundation help others, by giving on Giving Tuesday.”
SVS Foundation Annual Report published
The Foundation’s 2020 Annual Report looks at the challenging year upended by the pandemic and its effect on vascular surgery, and then looks ahead to welcome 2021 in its just-published 2020 Annual.
“A Look Back, A Look Ahead” includes financial information as well as infrastructure changes to and expansion of the SVS Foundation Board of Directors. Showcased stories detail how lives of amputees and those in danger of amputation are benefiting from SVS Foundation Community Awareness and Prevention Project (CAPP) grants. Indeed, the SVS Foundation thanks all who share to make this impact possible.
The report also details deadlines for 2020–21 awards, the different Foundation funds and ways to give.
Read the report to learn how donor dollars impact patients health and wellbeing and vascular care, at vsweb.org/FoundationReport20.