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Blue Bird Circle Clinic for Pediatric Neurology
Texas Children’s
Celebrates Ten Years of Partnership with The Blue Bird Circle
On July 1, 2008, we celebrate the 10th
anniversary of our partnership with The Blue Bird Circle who donate
to and volunteer in Texas Children's Blue Bird Circle Clinic for
Pediatric Neurology. The Blue Bird volunteers support Texas
Children’s financially and through dedicated service to the
Hospital.
One of
Houston’s oldest women’s volunteer organizations will also celebrate
the 85th year of its founding this year. What started in 1923 by 15
young women of the First Methodist Church has bloomed into a
volunteer organization with over 500 members that make an invaluable
contribution to Texas Children’s and The Blue Bird Circle Clinic for
Pediatric Neurology.
“I want to celebrate The Blue Bird Circle on the 10th anniversary of
their partnership with Texas Children’s Hospital and our Blue Bird
Circle for Pediatric Neurology. Blue Bird volunteers log more than
5,000 hours a year helping out in the Clinic and have contributed
more than $5 million to support pediatric neurology. But what they
give is so much more than we could ever quantify—we absolutely
couldn’t provide the kind of care and conduct the level of research
that we do at Texas Children’s, and particularly in neurology,
without these incredibly fine women who work tirelessly on behalf of
children,” said Mark A. Wallace, president and chief executive
officer of Texas Children’s.
Most notably, the Blue Bird Circle’s initial backing of the research
of Huda Zoghbi, M.D., director of the Jan and Dan Duncan
Neurological Research Institute and Texas Children’s pediatric
neurologist, played an integral role in her 1999 discovery of the
gene that causes Rett syndrome. “The wonderful Blue Bird volunteers in the clinic took a list of
symptoms I gave them and looked in the charts to see if they could
find me more patients. Within a few days, they came back with 35
charts–seven of which turned out to be patients with Rett syndrome,
“ said Zoghbi, also professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of
Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
Wallace added, “The Blue Bird Circle has helped lay a foundation of
excellence on which all of our future endeavors in neurology will be
built. We are blessed to have their partnership, and we congratulate
all of the Blue Bird volunteers on this special anniversary.”
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