About Us
New Healthcare Class Teaches Students About House Calls
Thursday, February 9, 2012 – House calls are an antiquated practice for doctors, but for medical students at the University of South Florida they are a critical part of the curriculum.
Read the full article at KSDK.com
Former Miss America Nicole Johnson and a Type 1 Diabetic, Finds Healthy Relationships Help Us; She’s Part of Bringing Science Home at USF
Wednesday, November 19, 2011 – It has been almost 19 years since the day that my doctors defined the course of my life with a devastating diagnosis: Type 1 Diabetes.
Read the full article at the St. Petersburg Times online site
USF’s Bringing Science Home gets $2M challenge grant
Sarasota, FL (Oct. 3, 2011) – The Patterson Foundation announced today that it has extended its $5.6 million collaborative partnership with USF Health for the Bringing Science Home initiative from three years to five years. In addition, The Patterson Foundation announced a dollar-for-dollar matching challenge up to $2 million for donations benefiting Bringing Science Home. This challenge creates the potential for a $4 million endowment for the initiative to ensure it thrives financially in perpetuity.
Read the full article at USF Health
St. Petersburg Times – Living as a young diabetic
Sunday, May 15, 2011 – One moment, our young friend Laura Bernstein, then an eighth-grade student here in Tampa Bay, was sitting in class doing her schoolwork.
Read the full article at the St. Petersburg Times online site
St. Petersburg Times – Life with diabetes intense, emotional for children and parents
Saturday, December 18, 2010 – Type 1 diabetes can be exhausting to families coping with the disease, especially parents. And the continues holiday food intensitifies the struggle. There is a new project to help families.
Read the full article at the St. Petersburg Times online site
Press Release
USF, The Patterson Foundation announce $5.6 million project to transform chronic illness
TAMPA, FL (June 11, 2010) — USF Health and The Patterson Foundation have embarked on a partnership to help people with chronic illness live happier, healthier lives.
USF Health will use a transformational $5.66 million gift from The Patterson Foundation to launch Bringing Science Home, a model program that will develop new ways of learning and caring to help people approach their lives optimistically.
The project will start by focusing on diabetes, especially in helping people transition through important life stages, and then expand to looking as other chronic illnesses, such as asthma and arthritis.
From left to right: Dr. Klasko, Nicole Johnson, USF President
Judy Genshaft, USF VP of Communications Michael Hoad,
VP of Advancement Joel Momberg and Patterson Foundation
President Debra Jacobs.
“I’m delighted that The Patterson Foundation has chosen to join with us to help people with chronic illness take an optimistic approach to their health,” said Dr. Stephen Klasko, dean of the USF College of Medicine and CEO of USF Health. “With Bringing Science Home, we will take health beyond the traditional confines of a doctor’s office and help people bring tools for better health to every aspect of their lives. It will be like giving each person diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes an “invisible friend™ at USF Health.”
Through its gift, The Patterson Foundation strives to honor the Patterson family legacy and transform the way people live with chronic diseases, said Debra Jacobs, president and CEO of the foundation.
“My hope is that as we partner with the University of South Florida, we will be able to create new realities of dealing with chronic disease,” Jacobs said. “We hope that patients will learn how they can manage the disease, instead of the disease controlling their lives.”
Nicole Johnson will be executive director of Bringing Science Home. Johnson, who is Miss America 1999, has been working as a director with the USF Health Diabetes Education Center. Johnson has Type 1 diabetes herself and has become a national advocate for people with diabetes.
“Bringing Science Home is all about getting into the heart and soul of people with diabetes and other chronic diseases,” Johnson said. “We want to understand their challenges, understand their frustrations, understand their daily regime and all the things that they go through, and then figure out: What is it that they need? How do we bring something to them that helps them live more optimistically, and in a more empowered fashion?”
People with diabetes often struggle with feeling judged by a number, the number of their blood sugar level. Too often, the care available for them centers only on tracking that number, rather than helping them live with the disease on a daily basis, figuring out how their disease management needs change as their lives do.
Audience members and reporters watch those on stage talk
about the impact Bringing Science Home will have on diabetes.
Bringing Science Home will start with researchers in the College of Public Health, studying how people with chronic illnesses learn, so as to understand best how to help them change their lifestyles and behaviors.
The project will focus on how people’s needs change as they move through important transitions, or life stages. For instance, teenagers with diabetes often face conflict with family members and difficulties controlling their blood sugar as they move toward independence.
Bringing Science Home also will seek to better use today’s electronic technologies to help people with disease management.
“I have a pump and a sensor and a cell phone and a log book and a health team who doesn’t download any of them,” Johnson said.
The project will enlist USF scientists to develop devices that combine functions for convenience, are less bulky and more convenient, and can share information on the patient’s health condition with their medical team in real time.
The project also will work to expand the help available to another group that is often overlooked in chronic disease care: patients’ families. A disease that requires daily management challenges them as well. With diabetes, parents struggle to balance their childrens’ wishes for freedom with safeguarding their health. They have health questions in the middle of the night that nobody can answer. They may suffer from anxiety and depression themselves.
The Patterson Foundation became interested in partnering with USF on a diabetes initiative with USF in part because a Patterson family member had diabetes before his death. But the foundation’s effort expanded into the Bringing Science Home project because the project embodies so many of the foundation’s values, Jacobs said.
“We wanted a partner who would enthusiastically embrace an opportunity,” Jacobs said. “We live in a world of creating new realities. I hope that in a few years, that we will see people with diabetes and find that diabetes no longer owns them, but they own their lives and diabetes just happens to be a part of it.”
Ultimately, USF Health will show the way to a complete rethinking of chronic care. Bringing Science Home aims to serve as the pilot for an even larger project: finding a hospital partner to help create a Center for Lifespan Disease.
“Bringing Science Home is a great step in USF Health’s journey to revolutionize health care,” Dr. Klasko said. “We want to transform the concept of what it means to live with chronic illness.”
USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of medicine, nursing, and public health; the schools of biomedical sciences as well as physical therapy & rehabilitation sciences; and the USF Physicians Group. With more than $380.4 million in research grants and contracts last year, the University of South Florida is one of the nation’s top 63 public research universities and one of only 25 public research universities nationwide with very high research activity that is designated as community-engaged by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
The Patterson Foundation, based in Sarasota, Fla., seeks to motivate others to think and act beyond today’s reality and strives to generate philanthropic impact by finding innovative ways to join together with individuals and entities. The Foundation’s ultimate work can be divided into two parts. The first is to transform communities by taking novel approaches to the challenges they face. The second is to provide relief to individuals during times of crisis. For more information, please visit
Why We’re “Bringing Science Home”
Evvy & Laura Bernstein
Laura Bernstein was nine when she was told she had diabetes.
One moment, she was an ordinary kid. The next, she was in the hospital.
“I didn’t know what that was,”said Laura, now 16. “I thought, ‘Did I eat too many brownies the day before? Why is this happening to me? It’s not fair.’ ”
These days, Laura uses an insulin pump, and she’s learned to cope with her diabetes. But it can be a struggle for the whole family.
“It’s frustrating,” said her mother, Evvy. “I don’t even know what I don’t know.”
Now that Laura’s a teenager, Evvy has a whole new host of questions about how diabetes could affect her daughter’s life. What about driving? Alcohol? What if her sugar goes low while taking the SAT? Meanwhile, Laura gets frustrated that the biggest question that health professionals ask is where her blood sugar level registers.
USF Health has launched a new program, Bringing Science Home™, that will help patients and their families deal with such issues in chronic diseases.
Laura Bernstein’s point, that she is more than just a number, is at the heart of Bringing Science Home. The program will be a model for helping people with a lifelong illness improve their health through empowerment and behavior.
Nicole Johnson
Nicole Johnson, Miss America 1999, is executive director of the project. She has Type 1 diabetes herself.
“It’s so exciting that USF is on the forefront” of supporting families, she said. “Managing numbers is not enough. Bringing Science Home will work in partnership with families to create the other parts of their vision of ideal care.”
To live with a chronic illness, day in and day out, people need more than doctor and hospital visits. They need a health care partner to be part of their lives. We want to create an optimistic approach to lifespan illness.
Bringing Science Home, a new project that USF Health has embarked on in partnership with The Patterson Foundation, will use diabetes as a case study. Eventually, the program will be expanded to help people with other chronic diseases, such as asthma or lupus.
USF Health will base the project on life stages, helping people as their health needs change. USF Health will start its project by focusing on the life stage transition from high school to college. This change can be especially difficult for someone who must learn to manage a chronic disease more independently.
Ultimately, we will create a new model for health education and care. We’ll gain the expertise to apply the lessons we learn from diabetes to other chronic diseases.
As ambitious as it is, the Bringing Science Home project is the first step for USF Health’s groundbreaking work to rethink how we care for chronic care. USF aims to find a hospital partner to create a Center for Lifespan Disease.
We hope to help a whole generation gain the courage of Laura. “It’s part of who I am,” Laura says of diabetes. “And I’m not going to let it hold me back from anything.”
The Patterson Foundation
The Patterson Foundation exists to motivate individuals and entities to think and act beyond today’s reality. The Foundation believes that through innovative, collaborative philanthropy it will create new realities that transform communities. Along the way, the Foundation will strive to share what it learns and accomplishes with the rest of the world. As the legacy of The Patterson Foundation is created, the Foundation will continue to evaluate the courses of action that will best effect positive change.
Patterson Foundation President Debra Jacobs
The Patterson Foundation is a New Reality Foundation. This means it generates philanthropic impact by finding innovative ways to join together with other individuals and entities, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
