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Kate Ruddon
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CDC Foundation Receives $6.2 Million Commitment to Support Highest Priorities at CDC
October 8, 2002, ATLANTA - Zell and Emily Kravinsky, a mid-career Pennsylvania couple, have established two trusts worth approximately $6.2 million at the CDC Foundation to support the work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The larger trust - a $5 million trust - is the CDC Foundation’s largest gift ever from individual donors and the third largest gift overall in the Foundation’s seven-year history.
The two trusts create the Adria Kravinsky Endowment for Public Health, in memory of Dr. Zell Kravinsky’s sister, who died at age 33.
“The Kravinskys clearly recognize the tremendous impact that CDC has on all of our lives. They have made a powerful investment in public health - providing CDC with resources that will allow it to flexibly address important health threats,” says C. Charles Stokes, president and CEO of the CDC Foundation. “We are honored by the generosity of the Kravinsky family and look forward to working with them to empower CDC to do more, faster.”
The Adria Kravinsky Endowment will be administered through the CDC Foundation. As proceeds from the trusts become available, the CDC director, along with trustees of the fund and the CDC Foundation president, will decide how they will be allocated. The Kravinskys’ intention is to support the highest priorities of CDC.
The Kravinskys have a long-held interest in public health, recognizing it as a field where the greatest good can be done for the greatest number of people. They became fascinated by the work of CDC after a visit to the federal agency in August.
“The CDC collects and maintains a warehouse full of data, but the good done by the CDC itself defies calculation. No other effort in war or peace has generated the same degree of unadulterated respect for their government among Americans and goodwill toward the U.S. among the rest of the world,” says Dr. Kravinsky, a real estate investor, scholar of Renaissance literature and poet.
“The CDC Foundation stands between the CDC and the rest of us like a two-way lens and magnifies the contributions of each to the other,” he says. “We can’t think of a better place to remember the unnecessary death of a vital young woman than here with those whose mission is to prevent unnecessary deaths throughout the world.”
His wife Emily, a psychiatrist and expert on eating disorders, adds, “A gift to the CDC Foundation leverages the CDC’s scientific expertise by creating liaisons with other organizations.”
A current interest of the Kravinskys is Chagas’ disease, a global health threat they learned about during their CDC visit. Chagas’ disease is a debilitating chronic ailment caused by a parasite that lives in the gut of a large tropical insect. The disease afflicts 16-18 million people in Latin America and claims nearly 50,000 lives a year.
The Kravinskys became particularly interested in the work of CDC’s Dr. Ben Beard and his colleagues who are studying ways to prevent, detect and treat the disorder. Dr. Beard and his team have developed a promising new method of controlling the parasite in insects by introducing genetically altered bacteria that produce a substance that kills the parasite. The Kravinskys believe that their gift will help make a critical difference in advancing research that could lead to major gains against Chagas’ disease.
The Kravinskys, whose trusts were funded through real estate holdings, note that many investors and charities are missing the opportunity to leverage real estate holdings to support important causes.
“Investors often don’t know how to turn real estate into a viable charitable donation, and charities frequently shy away from gifts of property because of liability issues,” says Dr. Zell Kravinsky. “There are vehicles now through which property holders can convert real estate into gifts that charities can readily accept. This is a huge untapped market,” he says.
The CDC Foundation is an independent non-profit enterprise that forges effective partnerships between CDC and others to fight threats to health and safety.