CHEST Foundation Donor Spotlight December 2018 | Page 9

CHEST FOUNDATION BRINGS
RENEWED FOCUS AND MUCH
NEEDED SUPPORT TO YOUNG
CLINICIANS
As the CHEST Foundation continues to grow, so does our ability
to impact the careers of early career clinicians and to those still in
training. What began as a small travel grants program for the 2015
winners of the NetWorks Challenge was quickly identified as an
opportunity for the CHEST Foundation to deepen their engagement
with early career clinicians. The CHEST Foundation travel grants
program has grown immensely since 2015, but the core tenants
of the program remain unchanged – to provide excellent trainees,
medical students, and other members of the care team with the
fiscal support they need to become successful clinicians and
faithfully treat their patients and community.
Some of the ways our travel grants are put to good use is to
attend the CHEST Annual Meeting and to further engage them
as active members of CHEST. In addition to travel grant support
to offset the costs of attending the annual meeting, recipients of
these competitive grants receive free registration to the meeting;
individualized mentorship from a CHEST member who is currently
or has been part of CHEST leadership (ie, served on one of the
boards, as faculty, on committees, as well as chairs and vice-chairs
of the NetWorks); learn best practices for applying for research and
community service grants from previous grant winners; invitations to
exclusive receptions to network with peers and potential employers;
and access to several sessions at the annual meeting intended to
strengthen their clinical skill set. All of these programmatic pieces
come together to help propel these young leaders’ careers and
invest in the future of our discipline as CHEST clinicians.
Due to your overwhelming philanthropic support, CHEST
Foundation’s travel grant programs continue to flourish. In 2017, the
CHEST Foundation supported a total of 43 early career clinicians’
travel to attend the CHEST Annual Meeting in Toronto. Through
continued donor support, a successful NetWorks Challenge
fundraiser, and an overwhelming number of qualified early career
applicants for the travel grants, that number swelled to 72 clinicians
for the 2018 CHEST Annual Meeting in San Antonio. In total, the
CHEST Foundation dispensed over $70,000 in travel grants for CHEST
2018. We can’t thank you enough for the impact you have made in
these early career clinicians’ professional lives, and we urge you to
increase your gifts, so we can advance these important professional
development opportunities for clinicians by CHEST 2019!
“I’m so thankful to be a recipient of the CHEST
travel grant! It enabled me to connect with such a
wide array of health-care professionals and learn
from my peers. It was wonderful to discover that
there are many ways for me as a respiratory thera-
pist to become involved in CHEST! Thank you to
all the donors who made these awards a reality!”
—Maya Jenkins, RRT
“As an international medical graduate fellow, I expe-
rience challenges spanning from economic (inability
to moonlight), professional (scarce funding and
sponsorship opportunities, mentorship) to immi-
gration-related difficulties. The CHEST Foundation
grant is a superbly structured and implemented
opportunity that allowed me a chance to address
most of these challenges as I advance in my aca-
demic career. The grant itinerary permitted me to
network with mentors and, subsequently, resulted
in critical leads: A collaborative research project,
offers to write letters in support of my visa situation,
interest from a journal for one my manuscripts,
plans to submit proposals for #CHEST2019, and,
most importantly, support from leaders in our field
who offered guidance and sponsorship (huge shout
out to Dr. Chris Carroll)! I would like to thank the
Foundation for awarding this grant as it isn’t just the
grant but the slew of opportunities that came along
with it that can catapult fledgling careers in the field
of pulmonary and critical care medicine.”
—Viren Kaul, MD
“CHEST education is the cornerstone of pulmonary
medicine and delivering world-class health care.
CHEST and the CHEST Foundation care about me
and the importance of being the best practitioner I
can be for my patients. Having impactful conversa-
tions with other clinicians, seeing new innovations,
and learning through a diverse number of ways
while at CHEST 2018 gave me meaningful lessons
to apply in my daily practice. The travel grant made
this possible!”
—Sarah Brundidge, MSc, RRT

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