Children’s Research Fund Junior Board
Since 1992, the Children’s Research Fund Junior Board has been passionate about advancing discovery into new and more effective treatments for childhood diseases.
Please welcome our new CRFJB Research Scholar, Dr. Jami Josefson!
3-year, $150,000 to fund Dr. Jami Josefson
Dr. Jami Josefson is a physician-scientist and pediatric endocrinologist with two primary research interests. She is the Medical Director of the Lurie Children’s Thyroid Program and has a long-standing interest in optimizing treatment for children and adolescents with thyroid cancer. The most common types of thyroid cancer in youth, papillary and follicular thyroid carcinoma, have an excellent prognosis. Thus, it is important to individualize treatment plans and avoid overtreatment. Funds from this award will enable molecular sequencing on tumor tissue to identify those individuals at risk for a more severe course and allow for the individualization of treatment plans. This type of tumor testing will place the Lurie Children’s Thyroid Program as the forefront of precision medicine for childhood thyroid cancers.
Dr. Josefson also conducts clinical research in the developmental origins of childhood metabolic diseases with a long-term goal of prevention of childhood obesity and its associated conditions. She is one of the Principal Investigators of the NIH-funded GROWTH Study (Glycemia Range and Offspring Weight and adiposity in response To Human milk) which seeks to characterize human milk composition. There is a lack of knowledge on how the composition of human milk is impacted by maternal factors, and, in turn, how human milk composition affects growth during infancy and early childhood. This study is collecting human milk and studying infant growth on a large mother-child cohort, and analyzing the fatty acids in the milk and blood of mothers and babies. Funds from the CRFJB will support further research into the infant’s microbiome and methylome (epigenetics) in response to human milk composition. Results from this study will identify the health-promoting components of human milk and have an impact in the field of maternal-child health and metabolism research.
Become a Member
The Children’s Research Fund Junior Board consists of young professionals in the Chicago metropolitan area. If you are interested in becoming a board member of the Children’s Research Fund Junior Board, please contact us at membership@crfjb.org for more information and to be added to the prospective members list. Interviews for new members are conducted every November.
Our Mission
Since 1992, the Children’s Research Fund Junior Board has been passionate about advancing discovery into new and more effective treatments for childhood diseases. The board supports the work of the researchers and physician-scientists of the Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.
Focused on a result-oriented “translational” model of research, scientists in the Manne Research Institute labs are working to develop better and safer therapies for the almost 200,000 children treated each year at Lurie Children’s. As the Junior Board to the Children’s Research Fund, a primary philanthropic benefactor of the Manne Research Institute, the Children’s Research Fund Junior Board supports investigations in genetics, incurable neuromuscular diseases, epilepsy, and other conditions.
Since its inception, the Children’s Research Fund Junior Board has helped raise over nearly two million dollars for pediatric medical research initiatives conducted at Lurie Children’s and the Manne Research Institute.
