The overall
focus of the Foundation’s efforts is “to provide funding for
programs and projects designed to improve, preserve or restore
the health and health care of the people in Miami-Dade County,
Florida, with priority given to projects in the Coral Gables
community.”
As the board of directors of the Dr. John T.
Macdonald Foundation begins the year 2007, we reflect on our
history and the Foundation's relatively short existence as a
grant-making institution. We are gratified that our significant
efforts have been fruitful and that our foundation is not only
stable but is enjoying relative healthy growth. We again
reaffirm our commitment to our core mission to improve the
health and well being of children and families in our South
Florida community. With confidence in our worthy purpose, we
have concluded that we could, and should, continue to accomplish
more. We have evaluated the success of our two large-scale
visionary initiatives, now in their sixth year, and have
continued to support each. We continue our commitment to
community based organizations in our county and to provide
nursing scholarships in three local schools of nursing. We continue to be vigilant
and appropriately responsive to the unexpected needs that do
occur in our community.
The Dr.
John T. Macdonald Foundation School Health Initiative
has created clinics in a single feeder pattern, consisting of
three elementary schools, one middle school, and a high school,
in Miami-Dade and provides a dedicated staff and basic health
care, health promotion and disease prevention education, and
psychosocial services for the medically underserved children in
those schools. Comprehensive primary health care including
wellness education and support services is available within a
school setting to all students. In 2005, after the completion
of a five year, $6.25 million commitment, the Foundation
has awarded an additional $525,000 to the project, now serving
over 6,000 children in the North Miami Beach school feeder
pattern. We are proud to say that we now have other partners at
the table who also contribute to the success of this
revolutionary project.
The Dr.
John T. Macdonald Foundation Center for Medical Genetics
came after the completion of the Human Genome Project when the
global medical community recognized that genetics has a dramatic
effect on health care by vastly improving diagnosis, thus
enabling intervention, and ultimately prevention of the
disease. Genetics reach into every area of human health and
disease as every single human condition has a significant
genetic component. The mission of The Dr. John T. Macdonald
Foundation Center for Medical Genetics at the University of
Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine is “to establish an
international center of excellence at the University of Miami
for the discipline of Medical Genetics that will advance
research, offer education, and provide service." We originally
committed $6.25 million to this project. In 2005, we
made a further $5 million investment to create the
Miami GeneCure Diagnostic Laboratory. We are proud of its
efforts to detect curable diseases in newborns with the use of
genetic screening. We know both of these projects
are serving as catalysts that attract additional funding from other
sources, thus magnifying their potential.
The
Foundation also remains very committed to our smaller,
one-year grants. Since the inception of the Foundation in
1992, we have made grant awards and commitments totaling
$25,064,073. $7,039,083 has gone to our one-year grants and
scholarships. Contributions and commitments to our signature
programs total $18,025,620. It is a great pleasure for us to
serve our community by funding both our signature programs and
our smaller grants.
