Supporters

​As the founding cornerstone sponsor, The Law Stroud Foundation is supporting the BRANCH initiative’s efforts to form an international consortium of researchers, physicians, educators, and advocates dedicated to improving the experience of clinicians and patients. The goal is to establish sustainable partnerships and long-term collaborations that increase compassion in healthcare. 

 

BRANCH initiative efforts consider positive age beliefs and thriving later in life, in alignment with the Law Stroud mission. The Law Stroud Foundation’s three-year grant enables BRANCH to:

• Follow a proven approach to building sustainable international partnerships that work productively for all involved members.

• Recruit formal consortium members to inform development of a comprehensive strategic plan and mission, as well as vision and values statements. 

• Build a network of researchers and physicians whose knowledge and perspectives inform BRANCH’s efforts to build consensus on how to deliver healthcare with greater empathy. 

• Advance the vision of BRANCH through meetings with consortium members and others at conferences, focused think tank discussions, and other methods of sharing innovations. 

• Develop capacity to ascertain levels of awareness among clinicians and patients of issues in relationship science and healthcare, and assess beliefs about the nature of these issues, their causes, and potential solutions. 

• Aquire resources to produce illustrative stories and cases, qualitative assessments, descriptions of active programs or initiatives devoted to these issues, and recommendations for implementing positive change.

• Create this website and write A Way Forward in Primary Care: Making Healing Work, a book to support clinicians in building trusted close relationships with patients.

 

BRANCH intends to support Law Stroud community engagements, including speaking at screenings of the Persistent Productions' “In Life” series of video portraits and documentary that reveals the vibrant artistic worlds of writer Betsy Cox, painter Goh Beng Kwan, and pianist Leeanne Rees; the documentary showcases how these individuals’ later years are marked by renewed creativity and mastery, highlighting that aging can fuel extraordinary artistic achievement. 

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As the cornerstone funder, the Law Stroud Foundation support enables us to focus on organizational development and to acquire the additional funding commitments needed to launch specific projects, gain institutional support, and develop a financially sustainable organization through a variety of potential strategies. One outcome of our first year is that the Law Stroud Foundation funding is augmented by a matching grant from the Jaharis Fund, managed by the Department of Family Medicine (DFM) at Tufts University School of Medicine. The Jaharis family made a generous contribution to the DFM to build research capacity. Expenditures from this fund of $240,000 had been withheld until a viable strategic plan for research development was in place. The adoption of the BRANCH initiative as a priority for the Department broadly speaking as well as the intent for Department faculty to conduct research of the type initiated by Ashley Duggan and Allen Shaughnessy prior to the formal launch of BRANCH in 2023 led Wayne Altman as Department chair to devote this generous donation to the development and support of the BRANCH initiative. 

 

The Tufts University School of Medicine DFM has also generously provided significant in-kind support through both faculty and staff support as well as Wayne as the chair and a lead for the development of BRANCH advocacy and policy. Boston College has directly supported Ashley Duggan as professor though salary support as well as through small grants and other resources essential to her work as a faculty member as it relates to the BRANCH initiative.

 

In addition to support for BRANCH development, we’ve received project-based support. The Accelerate the Future Foundation awarded $345,000 for the first two years of the Mirah evaluation project described on the Activities page of this website. We are hopeful that this game-changing project for improving mental healthcare will continue beyond the initial two years of funding.