PITTSBURGH — The Eye & Ear Foundation, which supports the ophthalmology and otolaryngology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, has raised $52 million as part of an $80 million campaign launched in 2016.
The New Horizons for Care Campaign seeks to address age-related conditions such as macular degeneration, glaucoma and hearing loss. The foundation intends to complete the campaign by the end of 2023, according to a press release.
“By raising and distributing philanthropic dollars to the Departments of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology, the Foundation encourages individuals, foundations, and businesses to support enhancing and advancing care for people with diseases and disorders of the eye, ear, nose, throat, head, and neck,” said Eye & Ear Foundation CEO Lawton Snyder.
The campaign recently received a $20 million boost with a gift from the Henry L. Hillman Foundation.
The Department of Ophthalmology’s goals were inspired by the arrival of Department Chairman José-Alain Sahel, MD, to Pittsburgh in 2016. Vision degeneration affects nearly everyone in one form or another as they age, and the number of individuals with visual impairments is expected to triple by 2050, according to the release. Places like Pittsburgh, with its aging population, will be significantly affected by this epidemic of vision loss. His teams work on nearly every aspect of blindness, from common conditions such as glaucoma and macular degeneration to regenerative therapies and engineering artificial retinas and the hardware and software that feeds them information.
At the time of the Henry L. Hillman Foundation gift, Sahel said: “We are driven by helping patients. It starts with identifying conditions among patients, which flows into using research to find solutions, creating new therapies and devices, commercializing those advancements, and ultimately bringing them back to the patient by enabling access to everyone.”