$2 million pediatrics endowment created
Oct. 24, 2006
Mark and Theresa Thoman have established a $2 million endowed chair position for pediatrics at the UM Hospital system.
Mark Thoman said he chose the pediatrics department because one of his two medical specialties is pediatrics — the other is toxicology.
"There was no toxicology department, which was the other option," Thoman said. "And maybe I can do something like that later, but right now it was just a matter of giving back to children. I have six children and 10 grandchildren, so I sort of qualify as someone who could benefit from all this support."
Mark Thoman graduated from the MU School of Medicine in 1962.
The $2 million donation funds an endowment chair position.
The new chairperson's duties will include education and preventative care research in pediatrics.
When money is donated as an endowment, the endowment's interest is spent rather than the money originally donated.
"The $2 million is placed in a fund, and the interest that's gained off of that is used to fund the endowment chair basically in perpetuity forever," Thomas Selva, a general pediatrics doctor, said. "That's the beauty of the endowment. It's the gift that keeps on giving."
The endowment is a crucial one, even at MU, which has numerous subdivisions of pediatric care.
The Thomans' gift is mainly meant to further improve patient-centered care and research in anticipatory guidance, Selva said.
"Dr. Thoman's gift was designed to foster further efforts in patient-centered care, which pediatricians are all over because our patients really can't fend for themselves, so we're always about the patient being about the center of our care," Selva said. "Also, it fosters more research in anticipatory guidance which he (Thoman) was really big on, and that's basically guidance we give to families."
Selva said children's issues aren't as high a priority here.
"I would say in the state of Missouri and nationwide a lot of children's issues aren't addressed, and medical care for children is often under-funded because there are bigger issues, at least in the eyes of the federal government and insurance companies," Selva said.
Though the Thomans' donation doesn't go directly to her department, fourth-year medical student Lindsey Shrimpf, majoring in child psychiatry, said the donation would benefit all areas of medicine related to children.
"I think that supporting research with children and trying to have monetary funds to be able to provide them better services so they can grow into healthy, happy adults is a great, positive thing to do," Schrimpf said.
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