The department of pediatrics in UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine received a donation of around $2 million to help treat children with disorders, such as cerebral palsy and autism.
Ralph, Shirley, Peter and Alison Shapiro gifted $2.257 million to the department of pediatrics in June. The donation will support the endowed chairs of the department and help to establish three new five-year term chairs which will be held by faculty members in the department, according to the UCLA Newsroom.
One of the new chairs is the Peter Shapiro Term Chair for Enhancing Children’s Developmental and Behavioral Health. The endowed chair will fund training for health care providers, the development of illness screening tools and leadership for related initiatives.
To honor Ronald Cohen, a former United Cerebral Palsy of Los Angeles president and CEO for more than 30 years, the Shapiros collaborated with the UCPLA to create the Ronald and Susan Cohen Term Chair in Childhood Development and Cerebral Palsy.
Another endowed chair is the Alison Shapiro Term Chair for Children’s Cognitive Development, which aims to improve clinical care in UCLA’s school of medicine.
The endowed chairs are a part of the Shapiros’ ongoing philanthropy for people with disabilities. The family established the original Shapiro Family Term Chair in Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics and Cerebral Palsy in 2008 to strengthen training for clinicians and other health care providers. The additional endowed chairs created by the Shapiros will help UCLA recruit and retain pediatric medical faculty, including doctors who focus on cerebral palsy and autism, according to the UCLA Newsroom.
The Shapiros established the Peter William Shapiro Chair for the Center for Cerebral Palsy in the department of orthopedic surgery in 2008 to supply resources for students and clinicians and founded the UCPLA Endowed Chair in Special Patient Care in the UCLA School of Dentistry in 2015. They also created the Shapiro Family Endowed Chair in Developmental Disability Studies in the UCLA School of Nursing in March.
Beyond funding endowed chairs in the department of pediatrics, the Shapiro family created the Shirley and Ralph Shapiro Fellowship Fund to help first-year fellows in developmental behavioral pediatrics.