Former ATS President James D. Crapo, M.D., accepted the Breathing for Life award on behalf of his brother, Senator Mike Crapo from Idaho.

Celebrating the future of pulmonary and critical care research and a city enjoying its rebirth were at the heart of the 2010 Research Dinner for the Foundation of the ATS on Saturday night. With more than 700 guests in attendance, the second annual dinner raised more than $270,000 in support of the creation of two new unrestricted research grants for young investigators.

“The theme of the night, ‘Breathing Easy in the Big Easy,’ recognized the tremendous rebuilding that’s gone on in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the future of fellowship training,” said former ATS President Jeff Glassroth, M.D., chair of the ATS Foundation Board of Trustees and president and CEO of Northwestern’s Medical Faculty Foundation.

Dinner guests watched a video produced by the Foundation of the ATS that detailed the struggle of healthcare workers in New Orleans during and after Katrina. The production featured 18 vignettes of physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals, including volunteers from out-of-state, who continued to care for critically ill patients, despite widespread damage to medical facilities in the city.

“The video showed exactly what went on during and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina from a medical perspective,” Dr. Glassroth said. “Lots of these things have been seen on the news, but compiled as they were in this production, it was powerful and moving.”

The video described the struggles of medical workers in New Orleans in light of the damage to medical school facilities at Tulane University School of Medicine and Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine, New Orleans. The hurricane also damaged numerous other medical facilities and destroyed the city’s Charity Hospital. Following the documentary, Dr. Glassroth recognized a number of those healthcare heroes who cared for patients in New Orleans, in neighboring cities and states and throughout the country.

“The video showed what I call the ‘frontline heroes’ of Katrina,” said Foundation Director Lydia Neumann. “It showed what actually happened on the ground during the tragedy and then demonstrated what’s happened since to rebuild the pulmonary medical community in New Orleans.”

The 2010 dinner also featured the presentation of the second “Breathing for Life” award, this year given to U.S. Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who was recognized for initiatives he has supported to promote lung health.

Senator Crapo is the co-chair of the Congressional COPD Caucus, which seeks to educate and raise public awareness about the disease. He supported legislation giving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products and worked with the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure that patients with COPD and other lung diseases can carry supplemental oxygen onto commercial airline flights. Senator Crapo also co-sponsored legislation leading to Medicare coverage of pulmonary rehabilitation for COPD patients.

Unable to accept the award in person, Senator Crapo recorded a video message that was played at the dinner, in which he thanked the ATS for the “Breathing for Life” award. His brother, former ATS President and a nationally recognized COPD researcher and pulmonologist James D. Crapo, M.D., of National Jewish Health in Denver, accepted the honor on Senator Crapo’s behalf.

The annual dinner also recognized the work of the ATS’s partners in research, which include members of the ATS Public Advisory Roundtable, which was the first recipient of the “Breathing for Life” Award, in 2009, as well as other public interest organizations and pharmaceutical companies who support the ATS Research Program. Made up of patient public interest organizations, the ATS PAR works to improve the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary diseases, critical illnesses and sleep disorders and plays a pivotal role in the ATS’s research agenda.

Offering insight into her work as an investigator whose research was funded by the ATS in 2007, Lisa Young, M.D., of the University of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, described the investigation she conducted as the recipient of the ATS/Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome Network Partnership Research Grant and the Society’s Carl Booberg Research Award.

The dinner raised funds through the support of individual contributors, as well as corporate supporters including Merck, the Foundation Dinner Underwriter, as well as Actelion Pharmaceuticals US, Inc., Genentech-Novartis and Pfizer, Inc., Foundation Dinner Benefactors (for a full listing of corporate supporters, please see box).  

Funds raised will be used to create new unrestricted grants.

“The research dinner allows us to raise money to help fund research fellows who are the future of our discipline,” Dr. Glassroth said. “The more we support these young researchers in their transition from training to independent status as scientists and clinicians, the more we’re helping the future leaders in the fields of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine.”