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Staglin Festival for Brain Health raises $5.6 million
The Staglin Family celebrated advances in science and a new financial milestone at the 22nd annual Music Festival for Brain Health on Sept. 17 in the Napa Valley. This year’s efforts raised $5.6 million to benefit the IMHRO/One Mind Institute and One Mind.
The Staglin family and the One Mind board announced that the 22-year cumulative total, including direct contributions to One Mind, and leveraged funds provided to scientists as a result of IMHRO’s initial research funding from festival proceeds, has surpassed $256 million since 1995.
IMHRO and One Mind together have become the nation’s leading private-public mental health organizations dedicated to curing brain-related diseases, including depression, schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury and bi-polar illness, focusing on issues including funding, research, advocacy, open science principles and anti-stigma.
Co-hosts Shari and Garen Staglin, along with their children Brandon and Shannon, co-chairman Patrick Kennedy, and Pete Chiarelli, CEO of One Mind welcomed more than 500 supporters, scientists, and friends to to the annual event that works to raise awareness of the causes and cures for physiological brain disorders.
The event began with a scientific symposium, featuring keynote speaker Steven McCarroll, Ph.D., of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and of Harvard Medical School. Dr. McCarroll spoke on how new technologies are enabling scientists to understand the causes of brain illness by analyzing gene expression in vast numbers of individual brain cells, as demonstrated in his team’s news-making discovery of the C4 gene’s role in schizophrenia.
Also featured was David. O. Okonkwo, M.D., Ph.D., executive vice chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Dr. Okonkwo reported on how the collaborative research conducted through TRACK-TBI, a national longitudinal study to help victims of traumatic brain injury has already yielded breakthrough results. TRACK-TBI, with support from One Mind, has already achieved early successes including novel brain imaging modalities to improve diagnosis as well as the blood test that can identify patients at risk after any level of brain injury.
A symposium highlight was the announcement of the 2016 Rising Star Awards. IMHRO’s Scientific Advisory Board has chosen Dr. Mazen Kheirbek, Ph.D., and Dr. Mary Kay Lobo, Ph.D., to receive the 2016 IMHRO/Janssen Rising Star Translational Research Awards, and Dr. Kate Fitzgerald, MD, to receive the 2016 IMHRO/AIM Sullivan Family Foundation Rising Star Award.
A wine tasting in the Staglin Family Vineyard winery caves followed the symposium. The party continued when musician, filmmaker and humanitarian Michael Franti & Spearhead took the stage for a concert. The post-concert VIP dinner featured the cuisine of James Beard Award- winning Chef Gerard Craft of Niche in St. Louis and Nashville with Staglin Family wines.
Donations to the Music Festival for Brain Health may be made at www.imhro.org, or by sending a check to IMHRO, a 501 © (3) nonprofit organization that sponsors the Music Festival.Mail donations to: P.O. Box 680, Rutherford, CA, 94573. The date for the 2017 Music Festival for Brain Health has been set for Saturday, Sept. 16, 2017.