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P H I L A N T H R O P Y
Russell Berrie Foundation Donates $21 Million to Diabetes Center
LATEST GIFT FROM LONGTIME SUPPORTER BRINGS TOTAL DONATIONS TO $63 MILLION
Photo: Carmine Galasso/The Record
Angelica Berrie, wife of the late Russell Berrie, is president of the Russell Berrie Foundation. The Berrie Foundation's support has helped transform diabetes care and research at CUMC.
The Russell Berrie Foundation will donate $21 million to the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center to fund clinical care, new research, and ongoing efforts to use stem cells for understanding and possibly treating diabetes. An additional $7 million will go to New York-Presbyterian Hospital to create a Diabetes Heart Center of Excellence, which will focus on the cardiovascular complications of the disease.
    The Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center was created in 1997 through a collaborative vision among CUMC, the Russell Berrie Foundation and Columbia University. The Foundation’s initial $13.5 million grant, along with local and state government funding and other philanthropic support, provided the initial resources to create the center. It is now one of the premier diabetes facilities in the country, combining outstanding diabetes care with world-class diabetes research programs that together provide diabetes patients and their families with information, treatment and hope. The center supports a cadre of more than 50 investigators working on projects ranging from basic biology to clinical trials related to diabetes and its complications.
    Robin Goland, MD, associate professor of medicine and co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center, says the new gift is crucial to the center’s ability to continue caring for more than 12,000 patients each year and to support increasingly urgent efforts to find means to prevent or cure diabetes.
    “Since we opened, the Berrie Foundation has been critically important to the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center, not just by donating more than $63 million in the last decade for diabetes treatment and research, but also by helping us to transform the model of diabetes care in this city and beyond,” Dr. Goland says. “We are enormously grateful for their commitment.”
    Three other diabetes centers also opened in New York City in the late 1990s, all promising comprehensive care from a multi-disciplinary team including nutritionists, exercise physiologists, podiatrists and ophthalmologists to help patients control their diabetes. All but the Berrie Center have now closed. “This is not because diabetes is waning, but because the healthcare system undervalues the preventive and educational efforts needed to keep patients from developing the life-threatening complications of diabetes,” says Rudolph Leibel, MD, professor of pediatrics and medicine and co-director of the center. “The Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center survives today largely because of the generosity and concern of supporters like the Berrie Foundation and other enlightened individuals and groups.”
    The Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center is named for the mother of the late Russell Berrie, founder of one of the world’s leading suppliers of toys and gifts, Russ Berrie and Company. Both Naomi and Russell Berrie had diabetes. Mr. Berrie died in 2002.
    “Russ cared about people, regular people living their lives with diabetes,” says Angelica Berrie, the late Mr. Berrie’s wife. “He wanted his giving to impact people’s lives. What would matter to him most is the number of diabetes patients whose lives this support will transform. Every day, the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center improves the lives of people living with diabetes and fulfills Russ’s dream of providing a holistic, caring environment for people with diabetes.”

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