Responding to the world decrease in the number of physicians who were involved in research as well as treating patients, ten years ago Hadassah established a special fund to encourage medical residents to spend a year of their training conducting basic research. The Physician-Researcher Fund – the first of its kind in Israel – provides a full year’s scholarship to a Hadassah physician who agrees to dedicate that year solely to research.
Four years ago the National Science Foundation (NSF) established a similar program funded by the Legacy Foundation. The NSF program covers half the physicians' salary to enable them to conduct research.
Since its inception, 27 Hadassah residents have received the prestigious NSF grant – more than in any other medical organization in Israel.
This year at Hadassah's annual Research Day on October 19, some of the recipients presented their research projects and results in the presence of Rabbi Yaacov Litzman, Deputy Minister of Health; Prof. Daniel Hershkovitz, Minister of Science and Technology, and Prof. Benjamin Sredni, Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Health. Some of the topics they are investigating are: Crohn's disease; Aortic stenosis, a type of valvular heart disease; ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease; Diabetes; Pre-eclampsia, a complication of pregnancy; Lung Cancer; and Liver Transplantation in children.
“Research is the air Hadassah breathes,” said Prof. Shlomo Mor-Yosef, Director General of the Hadassah University Medical Center at the event. “Hadassah operates in two dimensions – providing the proper infrastructure for research and allocating time for Hadassah doctors to pursue research.” He detailed some of the unique research facilities that Hadassah provides in Israel exclusively – a cyclotron, a device that creates radioactive isotopes to track medications and biological materials for nuclear medicine; a micro-PET/CT imaging machine, an anatomic and molecular simulation device used only for research; and a Good Manufacturing Practices laboratory (GMP) where research is conducted according to strict international quality control standards.