Digestive Health Foundation raises $1.6 million at 2023 Gala

CHICAGO – The 2023 Digestive Health Foundation Gala raised $1.6 million to further its mission to fund vital medical research at the Northwestern Medicine Digestive Health Center aimed at improving the quality of life for individuals with digestive disease and their families.

The June 3 event at the Four Seasons Hotel Chicago highlighted how the researchers and physician scientists at the DHC are leveraging these funds to continue to improve and advance treatments for digestive health. The $1.6 million raised at this year’s gala brought the amount raised by DHF since its inception in 2015 to almost $20 million.

The gala was emceed by WGN’s Bronagh Tumulty and featured John Pandolfino, MD, MSCI, Hans Popper professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Northwestern Medicine; and Rajesh Keswani, MD, MS, director of endoscopy and director of quality at the Digestive Health Center and a Northwestern associate professor of medicine, gastroenterology and hepatology.

Pandolfino and Keswani spoke about how funding from the Digestive Health Foundation is impacting their work, specifically how the physicians at the DHC are working in tandem with AI to transform the future of gastroenterology.

Funds raised will be used to continue to support studies by the world-class physician scientists at Northwestern Medicine’s Digestive Health Center, as well as for groundbreaking initiatives changing the future of digestive care, including the DHF BioRepository in gastroenterology and hepatology, a blood and tissue bank used for digestive health research launched with a signature grant award from the Digestive Health Foundation and only one of a few resources of its kind in the world; the Artificial Intelligence in Mathematics in Gastroenterology project, which uses AI and virtual organs to improve the diagnosis and treatment of digestive diseases; and the use of nano-string technology to enable the study of inflammatory and immune cells in GI disorders.

One in five people will be diagnosed with digestive health disorders ranging from colorectal and pancreatic cancers to esophageal cancer and disorders, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, celiac disease, liver diseases such as hepatitis and others. Since its inception almost eight years ago, the Digestive Health Foundation has raised almost $20 million and funded 82 research studies aimed at transforming digestive disease into digestive health for patients and their families.