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The Duchossois family is well known
for transformational gifts to the University of Chicago
and UChicago Medicine.
The Duchossois Center for Advanced Medicine was built
in the mid-'90s in honor of Beverly Duchossois,
who had lost her battle with cancer.
This building marked a turning point for UChicago Medicine
by bringing outpatient services to the main campus.
It really raised the bar with respect
to philanthropy at University of Chicago Medicine.
We'd never had a gift of that magnitude before.
And so there's a tradition in the Duchossois family
of making transformational gifts and making a huge difference
at the University of Chicago.
That tradition was started by Dick Duchossois.
One of the central tenants of his message
to family members over the years is to help others.
And we're trying to get the family to really understand
that it isn't taking.
It's how much you give back.
And if we can get that across in one way or another,
then we've done a good job.
If we can't, we have failed.
The Duchossois Family Foundation increased its endowment
after a gift from the estate of Bruce Duchossois.
Family members started thinking of even bigger ways
to impact society.
This money that Bruce gave--
it'll just keep going and keep going.
The idea came from many meetings with Foundation members
and, eventually, university staff.
The extraordinary thing about this gift
is the way this family has come together.
Multi generations of this family have come together with vision
and applied that with a wonderful commitment
to make that vision realized.
That was relatively unique in philanthropy
because it really did involve a collaboration
between the family broadly the scientists, our faculty.
And I think the scientific vision that we have come up
with is both compelling from a scientific standpoint,
but it also is enthusiastically embraced by the family.
The thought was to do something different that
would impact people everywhere.
I mean, in the very beginning, there
was very little knowledge, I think,
of what we were really sort of going to end up with.
And that discovery path was exciting.
Pushing it to, again, this 21st-century way
of looking at things with a new generation,
of being able to shift the paradigm of how we are
practicing medicine, and what it means to treat the human body.
The family asked about wellness.
They knew university researchers and UChicago Medicine
caregivers were doing a good job trying to defeat illness.
But what about stopping illness before people were sick?
Well, I think everyone needs to be healthy,
and everyone deserves a healthy, good quality of life.
And you think about our family is
no different from any other family out there.
We all struggle with mental illness, cancer, asthma.
There There are so many different issues.
And if there's a possibility that families could--
that could be nonexistent or that we could eradicate that--
I mean, that would be incredible.
The sooner we can end up with a wellness program that
can impact the immune system from birth,
that can prevent someone from getting
a terrible, debilitating disease--
that's how it's going to impact society,
and that's why there is a significant sense of urgency--
commercialization and taking care
of those that might need a little help staying
healthy through their life.
After countless meetings and presentations,
the idea for the Duchossois Family Institute--
harnessing the microbiome and immunity for human health--
was born.
To see this unfold this many years later with an institution
as prominent and with such grand potential
as University of Chicago is is personally--
I don't have the words to describe it.
It's just awesome.
There's a marriage between the science
and the actual potential of something that
is going to change the world.
The Duchossois family hopes their transformative gift
will serve as an inspiration to others
to give back and make a difference in society.
It's people like the Duchossois family, who
have the courage and the conviction
and the vision to think about the possibilities of making
things better, taking it to the next level, that are going
to make the reality happen.
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