EMERGENCY 911

Dial 911 any time of day or night from any telephone in the United States, and an operator will spring into action to determine the type and location of the emergency, send appropriate personnel and equipment to the scene and tell the caller what to do until help arrives. It is such an important safety net that 911 is one of the first phone numbers parents teach their children. Efforts to create a national emergency medical response system began in 1966, when the National Safety Act authorized funds for ambulances, communications and training programs. These efforts were augmented in the early 1970s when the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provided 44 grants in 32 states for regional emergency medical services—the largest sum of private funds ever allocated for this purpose. The foundation program demonstrated the concept of a regionalized, systematic approach. Following these grants, the federal government stepped in and made a series of grants that resulted in today's nationwide 911 system.

THE HOSPICE MOVEMENT

In the early 1970s, long-term care for the terminally ill was a frustrating and saddening experience for families. A group led by Florence Wald, dean of the nursing school of the Yale-New Haven Medical Center, asked foundations to fund a feasibility study of opening a hospice in New Haven, Connecticut. Simultaneous support from the Van Ameringen Foundation, the Ittleson Foundation and the Commonwealth Fund assisted in establishing and staffing a hospice to care for 100 terminally ill patients in their homes as well as in a 44-bed facility. This program became a model for hospital and home care of terminally ill patients and a training center for hospice workers.

THE PAP SMEAR

Cervical cancer is one of the easiest cancers to treat, when caught early. Until the 1940s, however, there was no simple, inexpensive test for diagnosing this disease. Dr. George N. Papanicolaou first discovered in 1923 that cervical cancer could be diagnosed before a woman presented any symptoms. Although he reported his findings, pathologists dismissed them, unwilling to believe cancer could be detected in individual cells. Papanicolaou later wrote, "I found myself totally deprived of funds for continuation of my research...At a moment when every hope had almost vanished, The Commonwealth Fund...stepped in." Support for Papanicolaou's highly speculative work proved crucial to the development and eventual acceptance of the Pap Smear—the basic and now routine diagnostic technique for detecting cervical cancer.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Going to the local library and borrowing books for free is a privilege most Americans take for granted. Yet less than a century ago, the idea of equal access to books and educational materials was revolutionary and controversial. It was the generosity and vision of one man, Andrew Carnegie, that created more than 2,500 libraries worldwide during the early 1900s. Nearly every community that requested support from Carnegie or his foundation—Carnegie Corporation of New York—received it, and by the 1920s, funds from Carnegie and his foundation had led to the construction of 1,679 public libraries in the United States alone. Today, these libraries, each a monument to the grand architectural style of the time, are an integral part of this nation's public library network.

THE POLIO VACCINE

It was only recently that people in this country and the world lived in fear of the deadly, crippling effects of polio. In December 1994, the Pan American Health Organization announced that polio finally had been eradicated from the Western Hemisphere. The visions of people in iron lungs and heavy braces have been all but erased from this nation's memory because of the Salk vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk in 1953. Salk was able to establish and equip his virus laboratory, located at the University of Pittsburgh, because of a 1948 grant from the Sarah Scaife Foundation (later known as the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation). Other foundations also supported Salk's work, but it was the Scaife foundation that put up the initial risk capital and provided a follow-up grant two years later.

ROCKET SCIENCE

The development of rocket science was a necessary precursor to space exploration—an area of strategic importance to America and to satellite communications, which touch our lives today in innumerable ways. It was foundation money that permitted a scientist to experiment and to discover the technology that helped this nation become the first to place a man on the moon. After having built a rocket that could travel in a vacuum, physics professor Robert H. Goddard received a small grant from the Hodgkins Fund of the Smithsonian Institution to build a high-altitude version of it. He succeeded in 1926, when he launched a rocket that flew 41 feet in the air for 2.5 seconds. Subsequent launches caught the attention of neighbors, police and reporters, who considered his efforts a joke. Taking Goddard's efforts seriously, however, was Harry Guggenheim, who consulted with Charles Lindbergh on the feasibility of Goddard's ideas. Lindbergh persuaded Guggenheim's father, Daniel, to provide support over a four-year period for Goddard's work. Ultimately, the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation funded Goddard's work for 11 years.

SESAME STREET

Every day, many of this nation's preschool children learn their ABCs, colors and numbers from a huge yellow bird, a frog, a garbage-can "grouch" and a host of brightly colored puppets—along with a few human actors—on Sesame Street. The children who tune in have fun while learning the basic cognitive and social skills they need to make the transition from home to school. In an average week, the show reaches 16 million viewers; it is the most widely viewed children's series in the world.

Although Sesame Street is self-supporting today, this was not always the case. During the early 1960s, the National Education Association endorsed the idea of making preschool education available to all children, but funds available within school budgets were not sufficient for such programs. In 1966 the Carnegie Corporation of New York underwrote a feasibility study on the use of television for preschool education; the same foundation then gave the Children's Television Workshop a two-year grant to launch Sesame Street. Grants from the John R. and Mary Markle Foundation and others followed.

WHITE LINES ON HIGHWAYS

In the early 1950s, engineer-inventor Dr. John V. N. Dorr had "revolutionary highway theory." He postulated that at night and when rain, snow or fog impaired vision, drivers hugged the white lines painted in the middle of highways. Dorr believed this led to numerous accidents and that painting a white line along the outside shoulders of the highways would save lives. Dorr convinced highway engineers in Westchester County, New York, to test his theory along a stretch of highway with curves and gradients. The decrease in accidents was dramatic, and a follow-up test in Connecticut had similar results. Dorr then used his own foundation, the Dorr Foundation of New York, to publicize the demonstration's results. Although state funds are now used to paint white lines on the shoulders of this nation's highways, every person who travels in a motor vehicle is indebted to Dorr and his foundation the implementation of this life-saving discovery.

COMBATTING WORLD HUNGER

In the 1960s, the threat of widespread starvation in developing nations was one of the most pressing issues facing world leaders. Developing nations lacked the resources for the large-scale food production required to feed their expanding populations. A collaboration between the Ford and Rockefeller foundations created research centers, which in turn brought together scientists from around the world to develop improved varieties of wheat and rice. Two centers, the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, created new varieties of rice and wheat that greatly enhance yields. The results were astounding. Where just a short time before experts had predicted famine, countries were becoming self-sufficient, and were providing food at a low cost. Called the Green Revolution, this effort to improve agricultural practices also led to more jobs and goods for trade.

YELLOW FEVER VACCINE

By the beginning of this century, Boston and Baltimore had experienced a total of 50 yellow fever epidemics. Charleston, South Carolina; Galveston, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; and the Mississippi Valley had lost tens of thousands to the illness. Victims were being buried day and night.

Beginning in 1915, the Rockefeller Foundation funded a 30-year, all-out effort to eradicate this disease. Foundation physicians and scientists traveled to the cities and jungles of South America and West Africa, where they set up on-site laboratories and investigated causes of the disease. Many Rockefeller researchers died of the fever during the course of their work, but in 1936, foundation efforts paid off with the development of the first successful yellow fever vaccine. More than 1 million people were vaccinated in 1938 (with a 90 percent success rate) and during World War II, more than 34 million doses were manufactured and distributed free to Allied governments and health agencies. In 1951, foundation scientist Dr. Max Theiler received the Nobel Peace Prize in medicine for his work on the yellow fever vaccine.