Massachusetts General Hospital receives record gift from Kraft family benefiting community health and health equity

BOSTON — Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a founding member of Mass General Brigham, has obtained a progressive present of $50 million from Robert K. Kraft and The Kraft Family Foundation to deal with healthcare disparities resulting from race, ethnicity, geography, and financial status. The present is the most important in help of network fitness and fitness fairness withinside the records of MGH and greater than doubles the preceding commitments of the Kraft own circle of relatives to making sure the best best equitable fitness care is to be had in all of the groups served via way of means of the MGH.

“On behalf of the sanatorium, I would love to explicit our profound gratitude to the Kraft own circle of relatives for this transformative and inspirational act of philanthropy, which isn’t simplest the most important of its type in our records, however additionally the modern-day spotlight in their already prolonged records of help for MGH,” stated David F. M. Brown, MD, president of MGH. “We are devoted to serving our groups and this especially beneficiant present positions MGH to assist even greater sufferers in want of our care.”

The Kraft own circle of relatives`s present will help a everlasting Robert K. Kraft Endowed Chair in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion addressing fitness disparities in medical care at MGH and may be replicated past sanatorium walls.

The chair might be held via way of means of the clinical director of the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Disease Treatment Center at MGH. Research into sickle mobileular disorder (SCD), a extreme genetic blood ailment mainly impacting African Americans (in addition to Latinos of Caribbean ancestry, and those of Middle Eastern or Indian Subcontinent descent), is traditionally underfunded, main to inequitable get entry to to suitable take care of this debilitating, painful disorder.

“By growing an endowed function centered on addressing medical fitness care disparities, Robert Kraft and the Kraft own circle of relatives are growing critical pathways for sufferers residing with sickle mobileular disorder to acquire complete hospital therapy which has now no longer historically been to be had to them,” stated Joseph Betancourt, MD, MPH, Sumner M. Redstone Endowed Chair in Health Equity and senior vice chairman of fairness and network fitness at MGH. “I am thankful to the Kraft Family for his or her longstanding dedication to enhancing fitness care get entry to and consequences for sufferers and citizens of our network.”

The present can even in addition endow the Kraft Center for Community Health, first mounted in 2011 way to investment from the longtime benefactor. Its undertaking to catalyze progressive answers to frontline network fitness problems, execute answers locally, and cause them to scalable to enhance fitness consequences for deprived populations in Massachusetts – in addition to nationally – will maintain to extrade the healthcare panorama with Kraft’s modern-day present.

In 2018, the Kraft Center funded the Community Care in Reach program, a cellular unit presenting medical care and damage discount offerings to human beings maximum impacted via way of means of the opioid epidemic in the Boston, Brockton, Springfield and Worcester groups.

“The help of the Kraft own circle of relatives has been important in advancing network fitness and fitness fairness throughout the Commonwealth,” stated Elsie Taveras, MD, MPH, govt director of the Kraft Center for Community Health and leader network fitness and fitness fairness officer at Mass General Brigham. “This visionary present will make a great effect withinside the lives of human beings and the groups we serve, mainly for the maximum vulnerable, strengthening fitness care, enhancing fitness consequences and removing fitness disparities. I could not be greater thankful to Mr. Kraft and the Kraft own circle of relatives for this present to maintain the significant and impactful paintings of the Kraft Center.”

The present can even fund enlargement efforts on the Mass General Blood Donor Center, one in all the most important withinside the country, as a way to be renamed to honor the Kraft own circle of relatives. Serving greater than 12,000 donors yearly and accepting donations of entire blood, platelets, and double purple cells, the Mass General Blood Donor Center affords 75,000 blood additives yearly, or about 30% of the blood transfused for sufferers throughout all Mass General Brigham hospitals. The present highlights the middle’s aim of turning into the number one supply of blood for sufferers handled at MGH and growing a various donor populace to help the care of sufferers with sickle mobileular and different blood problems that mainly have an effect on minority populations.

“I am proud to stay in a metropolis this is domestic to what I recall the finest hospitals withinside the world, led via way of means of Mass General,” stated Robert Kraft, chairman and CEO of the Kraft Group. “Yet, I’ve constantly been stricken via way of means of healthcare inequities, as I realize there are numerous in close by groups who do not have healthcare and cannot get entry to the outstanding care others acquire here. That’s what stimulated me and my own circle of relatives to create the Kraft Center for Community Health in 2011. The undertaking of the middle is to deliver the sector elegance healthcare to groups during the region, presenting clean get entry to to all people in want through our cellular care units. That preliminary funding has paid dividends, as Dr. Elsie Tavares and her crew have stored lives and definitely impacted hundreds of sufferers during the last 12 years. Now, I am joined via way of means of Jonathan, Patti and my complete own circle of relatives, as we’ve determined to noticeably boom our dedication. With this present, it isn’t simplest our aim to develop and enlarge the size of the Kraft Center, however to additionally assist deliver extended visibility to the fairness troubles that exist in remedy remedy and development. I am venerated that the chief of Mass General’s sickle mobileular program, a disorder predominantly affecting human beings of color, gets the eye and consciousness it merits beneathneath the Robert K. Kraft Chair in Diversity Equity and Inclusion.”

The Kraft own circle of relatives’s greater than 40-12 months records of help for MGH and network fitness inside Greater Boston is extensive. Robert Kraft is an honorary co-chair of The Campaign for Mass General, an formidable fundraising attempt to raise $three billion to without delay help affected person care, fitness fairness and network fitness, studies and training packages on the sanatorium. Jonathan Kraft, chairman of the Mass General board of trustees and president of the Kraft Group, and his spouse Patti, function co-chairs of The Campaign.

About Massachusetts General Hospital

Founded in 1811, Massachusetts General Hospital is the unique and biggest coaching sanatorium of Harvard Medical School