Tonight's picture was taken on October 15, 2008. Mattie was three months into treatment. In September of that year, Mattie met Brandon. Brandon is the fellow you see sitting next to Mattie. There was about a 10 year age difference between these two friends, yet that did not matter. They were the "best" of friends and even when Brandon's cancer went into remission, he came back to the hospital quite often to visit with Mattie. Mind you Brandon lived about 90 minutes away from the hospital. So that was a big commitment. Mattie loved to build things and that day Mattie and Brandon worked together on a popsicle stick structure. I would have to say that I learned a lot about friendship from observing these two amazing fellows.
Quote of the day: Today's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins.
- number of people diagnosed with the virus: 8,679,483
- number of people who died from the virus: 225,495
This morning Peter and I had a conference call with one of the early investigator researchers we are funding through Mattie Miracle. We granted this researcher $20,000 and with these funds she generated data that is so rich and significant, that she is now applying for a Research Project Grant (R01). R01 is the original and historically oldest grant mechanism used by National Institutes of Health (NIH). As this researcher said this morning, she would never have qualified for this multi-site random controlled psychosocial study grant (through NIH) without the data generated through our grants. Which is very exciting news. We will feature an update from this researcher in our January newsletter. However, of the 12 studies we have funded so far, two of them helped early investigator researchers qualify for NIH R01 grants. Amazing, no?
Mattie Miracle grants are advancing the evidence based psychosocial research, they are helping to implement our Psychosocial Standards of Care, and most importantly they are getting us one step closer to optimizing supportive care to children with cancer and their families.
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