Finding the Power to Heal
With every beat of your heart, 25 percent of your blood pumps through your kidneys where it is purified by a million tiny filters.
Refuse to Give Up
Every day at Children's, we see kids who bravely confront an array of illnesses and injuries. Their steadfast refusal to be defeated by their circumstances inspires our best work, our best thinking and our best intentions. They are the driving force behind our mission to prevent, treat and eliminate pediatric disease.
Sensible people might scoff at a goal this lofty. But great accomplishments don't come from small ambitions. And the cost of aiming too low is to accept a world where children die from disease.
Research is the key to achieving this lofty goal. It reveals new understanding about how disease is caused, how it progresses and how it can be stopped. Research changes lives because it leads to new ways to treat and prevent illness.
Among research's great promise is its potential to transcend geographic boundaries. Once identified, new treatments, new vaccines and new knowledge can benefit people throughout the world.
The children and families we see every day in Seattle are more than just our patients. They are our inspiration, and we thank them for the courage and hope they give us in our quest to eliminate pediatric illness and injury. They have our promise to never give up.
Learn more about Research at Children's.
Finding the Power to Heal
With every beat of your heart, 25 percent of your blood pumps through your kidneys where it is purified by a million tiny filters.
Like the rest of the body, healthy kidneys constantly repair themselves. But when the kidneys are damaged through infection, injury or defect, the natural healing process is disturbed. Accelerated scarring ensues, gradually destroying the filters within.
Children's Dr. Allison Eddy is an internationally renowned nephrologist — and one of only a few pediatric researchers in the world studying how normal kidney tissue is destroyed by this response to injury and infection.
"Scarring should be a good thing," says Dr. Eddy. "It should lead to healing, not to further damage."
Dr. Eddy is one of several investigators at Children's who study the cellular and molecular processes that regulate how the body's tissue responds to injury. What they are learning could have far-reaching implications — the origins of disease that subsequently damage kidney tissue are similar to that in other solid organs, such as the heart, liver and lungs.
Dr. Eddy's ultimate goal is to develop new clinical tools to better manage, treat and eventually cure the diseases that affect children. Like the other researchers at Children's, she is helping to improve the medical care available for children in our region and around the world.
Dr. Eddy's life's work — and that of many other dedicated physician-scientists at Children's — is made possible, in part, by the generosity of a caring community.
Learn more about how you can help Children's researchers ease suffering and eliminate diseases.