Philanthropy

Community Outreach for Research & Education (C.O.R.E.)

Translating the Best of Biomedical Research into Public Health Education and Information  

The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) extends its core mission beyond basic research into the areas of advanced technology and drug discovery. As part of its new national platform and public outreach, TSRI has established a Center for Translational and Community Medicine in La Jolla, through the leadership of Richard A. Lerner, M.D., the Institute’s President, and under the direction of Katja Van Herle, M.D., M.S.P.H., Professor of Medicine and Director of Community Outreach for Research and Education (C.O.R.E.).

The Center has three objectives:

1. to increase Americans’ awareness of growing health problems such as the critical connection between obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease;
2. to translate advances in basic research; and
3. public health information services provided to organizations who have indicated an interest in the basic science research conducted at TSRI.

The work of the Center includes:

1. educational projects in collaboration with foundations and corporations to improve Americans’ health understanding and behavior from a solid scientific basis; and
2. special centers, funded by philanthropy, to advance clinically directed research in disease areas of interest to donors.

Scientists at Scripps Research—including three Nobel Laureates among the Institute’s 300 principal investigators—are historically free to pursue research in any area of biomedicine they choose. In addition to advances in potential therapies for stroke and heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia, diabetes, lupus, and other autoimmune diseases, their work has led most recently to effective new drugs for specific forms of leukemia and lung cancer, arthritis, and acute respiratory distress syndrome. Likewise, the Center will be free to follow human need and donor direction, beginning with specific projects related to diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s.

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A native of Belgium, Dr. Katja Van Herle is a graduate of the University of California Los Angeles, where she also received her M.D. and masters degree in public health. She served an internship and residencies and held a fellowship in internal medicine and endocrinology at UCLA before being appointed Assistant Professor of Medicine and Chief of Endocrinology in UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. She remains a faculty member at UCLA, with clinical practices in both Los Angeles and La Jolla.