The Ryan Foundation committed over $2.6 million to Boys Town National Research Hospital of Omaha in June 2020.
Boys Town has always held a special place in the hearts of Dr. and Mrs. Ryan. They often attended mass on Sundays at Boys Town where they met and became close friends with Fr. Val Peter and Sr. Marie Gross-Rhodes. Boys Town was not only a place of worship for the Ryan's, but an organization they supported in their efforts to expand their charitable reach into healthcare and research. The Ryan Foundation previously donated over $100,000 to Boys Town from 2000 to 2015.
Boys Town National Research Hospital is an internationally recognized leader in clinical and research programs focusing on childhood deafness, developmental language disorder, and related communication disorders. In 2013, they began a new frontier in neurobehavioral research using brain imaging techniques to better help diagnose and treat troubled children with severe behavioral and mental health problems. It is the hope of the Ryan Foundation that that this donation will allow the hospital to expand its research expertise into new areas relating to childhood diseases.
The donation will fund research on childhood diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, pediatric tumors, and hearing loss in children. The number of children and adolescents with Type 2 diabetes has skyrocketed over the last 20 years and is still climbing, prompting experts to call it an epidemic. Similarly, hearing loss in childhood is also a growing concern according to the Center for Disease Control, affecting 5 per 1,000 children. Globally there are more than 300,000 children diagnosed with pediatric tumors each year. Therefore, there is an urgent need for research to develop better treatment options for these pediatric patients.
To learn more about the Boys Town National Research Hospital, please visit their website.