The designation includes $50,000 a year in funding to help support a multidisciplinary team of health care professionals with expertise in Huntington's disease. The team will provide comprehensive medical and social services as well as education, outreach and research opportunities to the HD community.
"The addition of Rush University Medical Center means that our HD families living in Illinois and the surrounding region will no longer have to travel several hundred miles to receive the exceptional quality of care offered by an HDSA Center of Excellence," said Barbara Boyle, HDSA National Executive Director/CEO. "We look forward to working with the staff at Rush University Medical Center to make this an outstanding Center of Excellence."
"The movement disorders physicians at Rush have been providing state of the art care of persons with Huntington's disease for more than 30 years, said Dr. Kathleen M. Shannon, director of the HDSA Center at Rush. "With each new generation of affected persons, our commitment to this worthy patient family grows. Huntington's disease is a devastating inherited disease, but we are poised on the threshold of discovering effective treatments. This grant will allow us to increase our commitment to this deserving community."
The HDSA Center of Excellence at Rush will offer neurologic, psychiatric, psychologic, genetic, nursing, social work, therapy and family services. "The center plans to provide neurologic care at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County and to explore the creation of a regional network of care providers, including end-of-life care," said Shannon.
In addition, Rush is part of the Huntington Study Group (HSG), a consortium of clin
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Contact: Mary Ann Schultz
mary_ann_schultz@rush.edu
312-942-7816
Rush University Medical Center
28-Apr-2005