Philanthropic Collective Aims to Improve Disease Prevention and Care

It is well known that disorders affecting the nervous system take an enormous toll worldwide—in terms of economic impact and, more importantly, human suffering. Indeed, according to the 2021 Global Burden of Disease Study, disorders affecting the nervous system comprise the leading cause of overall disease burden in the world.

One theme of last week’s United Nations General Assembly Science Summit Neuroscience & Society side event in New York City is the particular urgency of global policy to turn the tide on the crisis of youth mental health. As I learned last week at the Child Mind Institute, millions of children—as many as one in five—struggle with mental health or learning challenges. Fully 70 percent of US counties do not have a single child and adolescent psychiatrist. Due to stigma, misinformation, and a lack of access to care, the average time between onset of symptoms and any treatment at all is over eight years.

This is a tragedy.

There are many confluent reasons why health outcomes in the US do not fully harness the amazing advances emerging from life sciences R&D. One such reason is that our biomedical ecosystem prioritizes research on basic science and mechanisms of disease, in contrast to research to prevent disease in the first place or to improve health outcomes from clinical encounters.

To help fill this gap, the Dana Foundation is proud to announce we are joining the newly launched Collective to Strengthen Pathways for Health Research. The Doris Duke Foundation, together with American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Dana Foundation, Donaghue Foundation, Robertson Foundation, Susan G. Komen, and additional philanthropic partners are the Collective to Strengthen Pathways for Health Research. The Collective is seeking to bring greater attention and resources for breakthrough health research to improve how we prevent and care for disease. Our current activities are focused on elevating voices and ideas to help define an actionable blueprint for progress.

The Collective is soliciting proposals to host symposia across the US in spring 2025, to explore and demonstrate how strengthening support for prevention of and improvement in clinical encounters can maximize the societal benefits of research.

At the Dana Foundation, our core mission is to maximize the societal benefits of neuroscience research; we work to advance neuroscience that benefits society and reflects the aspirations of all people, through grantmaking and field building. The field of neuroscience and society bridges the gap between research in the lab and the interdisciplinary knowledge needed to use it to improve people’s lives.

What does that mean in practice? We funded the UCLA-CDU Dana Center for Neuroscience and Society to bring this concept to life. Writer Bernadette Weigman described the UCLA-CDU Dana Center’s work in a Medium piece arguing for the critical need for community-based research in neuroscience. The Center’s mission is to create a space for the residents of south Los Angeles to engage in neuroscience, and for their needs and hopes to drive the research agenda. A demonstration project conducted as part of a planning grant we awarded to UCLA-CDU identified community concern about low-flying helicopter noise, which is pervasive throughout the overnight hours and a major concern of the community. Parents worried that the constant noise and persistent disruption of sleep could be adversely affecting their kids’ brain development and healthy function. In short, the neuroscience research partners on the project took this question to the lab and, using the fruit fly animal model, demonstrated that indeed that degree of noise pollution interfered with healthy brain function. The next step for the team was to turn that knowledge into power by advocating for policy action that would decrease the detrimental exposure to helicopter noise for these community members.

This example illustrates the power of community-based research to harness science to improve community health and potentially prevent, or at least decrease, the need for future clinical encounters. By reducing noise pollution, this may help reduce the prevalence of brain health disorders over time in the communities of south Los Angeles.

We at the Dana Foundation are eager to see what ideas are out there for symposia focused on prevention of and improvement in clinical encounters related to brain health. Please consider applying, and we would welcome your help in spreading the word about this funding opportunity. Interested applicants may contact Kevin Sia (mrp@dorisduke.org) with “2024 Strengthen Health Research” as the subject line for any questions.