Our Research Impact
Cassie + Friends celebrates the coming together of a community that holds us up, even through our hardest times. While we offer many programs and services that help kids and families with the day-to-day challenges of rheumatic disease, we never lose sight of our ultimate goal – a cure!
The fact that Canadian children today will suffer long-term disability, chronic pain and even blindness as an adult because of poor disease awareness and limited access to essential medicines is unacceptable. Working hand-in-hand with patients, families, medical specialists and researchers, our goal is to get kids from diagnosis to remission as quickly, safely and as pain-free as possible.
To Learn About our Latest Research, please visit:
Cassie + Friends Research and Care Network
Most clinical decisions are based on things physicians can see – recognizable signs and symptoms. By finding signs of disease in the body’s immune system (that can’t be seen by the naked eye), we’d be giving clinicians more specific information about the biology of a child’s disease, and potentially which drugs to use and how long to use them.
Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research / Cassie and Friends Society Scholar Award
Cassie & Friends partnered with the Michael Smith Health Research BC in 2017 to award a five-year $450,000 Scholar Award to Dr. Kelly Brown at BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute. Dr. Brown’s lab studies markers and mechanisms of inflammation for improved therapeutic management of rheumatic diseases in children (aka safer treatment decisions and better long-term outcomes for kids!). Her passionate team has already published major breakthroughs in vasculitis and DADA2 research. With our support of Dr. Brown, we are very proud to say that C+F funds one of just two or three full-time basic scientists in childhood rheumatic disease in Canada.
Pain App for Teens
Cassie & Friends awarded $50,000 to the SickKids Hospital Foundation to fund the first-ever Mindfulness videos targeted at teens with arthritis. The videos were incorporated into the iCanCope App, went viral and have now been seen by 4million+ viewers worldwide. This caught the attention of SickKids and inspired them to expand, for the first time-ever, from providing strictly educational articles on AboutKidsHealth.ca to developing coping strategies and resources on their website. That’s when the Medical Psychiatry Alliance stepped in (their mandate is to support youth with co-existing physical and mental illness) and together they were able to springboard C+F’s initial gift to create the brand new Youth Mental Health Portal (YMHP) at AboutKidsHealth.ca. We couldn’t be more proud of this success story and remain steadfast partners of the visionary Dr. Jennifer Stinson and her team.
$140,000 Gift to Ease the Pain of Children’s Arthritis
In 2017, we celebrated Juvenile Arthritis Awareness month with a $140,000 donation to BC Children’s Hospital Foundation to establish the Cassie & Friends International Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Pediatric Rheumatology – the first program of its kind worldwide! A portion of our funding also supported the establishment of a biobank for all pediatric rheumatology patients and helped to create a newly specialized clinic for children with autoinflammatory diseases, such as periodic fever syndrome.
We are now recruiting for our 2nd International Post-Doc and are thrilled to play a role in improving Juvenile Arthritis care around the globe!
The Ross Petty – Arthritis Society Research Chair in Pediatric Rheumatology
Acting as the single largest contributor outside of government, Cassie & Friends donated $400,000 to help endow Western Canada’s first Research Chair in Pediatric Rheumatology at BC Children’s Hospital and the University of British Columbia.
Since our early beginnings, Dr. Petty has been an incredible mentor in helping to shape the Cassie + Friends we are today – a national organization acting as a true and dedicated champion for kids and their families every single day!
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