Building a Bridge to Better Health

With more than half of the new Health Sciences Research Building on Emory’s campus dedicated to pediatric research, the collaborative project between the Woodruff Health Sciences Center and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta is destined to become a major center for children’s health.

Fourteen key priority centers have been identified for the Emory-Children’s Pediatric Research Center: hematology and oncology through the Aflac Cancer Center; immunology and vaccines; transplant immunology and immune therapeutics; pediatric health care technology innovation; cystic fibrosis; developmental lung biology; endothelial biology; cardiovascular biology; drug discovery; autism; neurosciences; nanomedicine; outcomes research and public health; and clinical and translational research.

A two-story bridge, christened the Brumley Bridge, connects the Health Sciences Research Building to the Emory-Children’s Center. The bridge is named in memory of George W. Brumley Jr., founder of the Zeist Foundation, which gave $4 million toward the building. Brumley served as head of Emory’s Department of Pediatrics and as Children’s medical director.

Neonatologist and neonatal infectious disease specialist Barbara Stoll, whom Brumley recruited to Emory, holds the Brumley chair and is chief academic officer of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, president of the Emory-Children’s Center, and chair of the Department of Pediatrics in Emory’s School of Medicine.

“The bridge is an actual and a symbolic link between Emory and Children’s and reflects our shared commitment to child health in Atlanta and beyond,” Stoll says.

Donors to the building include the O. Wayne Rollins, Joseph B. Whitehead, Robert W. Woodruff, Zeist, Martha and Wilton Looney, Katherine John Murphy, and Luther and Susie Harrison foundations; the David, Helen, and Marian Woodward Fund; the Georgia Research Alliance; Raymond F. Schinazi; Margaret Hirst Davis; James and Helen Carlos; and many others, including an anonymous donor who made a major gift.

“We are proud to be able to push medical advances forward and partner with Emory and Children’s for the future health of children,” says Brad Foster, executive vice president of the Zeist Foundation and trustee of the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Foundation.