TU: UF Health, St. Vincent’s HealthCare and Mayo Clinic receive Coastal Blood Foundation grants

Link to article: https://www.jacksonville.com/news/20190621/uf-health-st-vincents-healthcare-and-mayo-clinic-receive-coastal-blood-foundation-grants

The Jacksonville-based Coastal Blood Foundation has awarded about $561,000 for blood-supply and blood-illness projects and programs, including seven in Northeast Florida.

The grants go to researchers, hospitals and educational programs focused on research and innovation for blood and blood-related products and services, as well as identifying and supporting community outreach activities that fight blood-related diseases, according to the foundation. The foundation’s third round of annual grants was about 35 percent more than last year’s total of $422,000.

“We are proud to award these grants to important and innovative projects in our community,” said Jim Sebesta, the foundation’s board chairman. “These initiatives are creating programs and research to directly improve the health of our region’s residents.”

The foundation was formed from the 2015 merger of the Blood Alliance, which provided blood supply to Northeast Florida hospitals, and the Orlando-based OneBlood, which serves Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. The merger created a $15 million endowment to fund the foundation.

The area grant recipients were:

• UF Health Jacksonville, $125,000 to initiate its Jacksonville Benign Hematology Care Program, a multiyear project for the care for hematology patients with sickle cell anemia and other anemias; $6,000 for transfusion-medicine fellows to receive training at the OneBlood Reference Laboratories in St. Petersburg and at a transfusion medicine conference in San Antonio.

• St Vincent’s HealthCare Jacksonville, $25,000 to support 10 student scholarships at blood laboratory careers in Jacksonville; $17,457 for a teaching microbiology microscope for the medical laboratory science program.

• Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, $100,000 for its groundbreaking research of impact of blood-donor age in red blood cell nitrosylation; $60,000 for staff educational activities; and, with Florida State College at Jacksonville, $23,800 for a joint program for select college freshmen students, including a four-day laboratory science immersion.

For more information go to coastalbloodfoundation.org.

Beth Reese Cravey: (904) 359-4109