Featured Supporters: Pediatric Allergist Endows Professorship to Continue Work in his Field

Medical professionals devote their lives to helping people heal. On top of the countless children he has treated in his nearly 50 years of practice, Eric M. Dreyfuss, M.D., clinical assistant professor at Golisano Children’s Hospital at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC), has ensured that the next generation of children who require services in his field, pediatric allergy, get the best possible quality of care.

Dreyfuss, who has worked in pediatric allergy since 1962, has donated $2 million to establish the Founders Fund, which will support pediatric allergy training programs and endow a new professorship for pediatric allergy at URMC’s Golisano Children’s Hospital.

Endowed professorships are given to faculty who are viewed as exceptional in their fields and institutions. In times when the economy is faltering and its future remains uncertain, funding through endowments is extremely valuable. Through this type of donation, Dreyfuss can provide the means for investigating new ideas in pediatric allergy when traditional National Institutes of Health resources are especially tight.

As a donor to an endowed professorship at Golisano Children’s Hospital, Dreyfuss will be in on the ground-floor of important research, teaching and clinical care in pediatric allergy. “Rochester has been very important in establishing the fields of allergy and pediatric allergy in the United States,” Dreyfuss emphasized.

Dreyfuss is passionate about the significant role Rochester has had in the establishment of the subspecialties of allergy and pediatric allergy and wishes to sustain its remarkable reputation in the field. Dreyfuss’s devotedness to his practice can be well-explained by the fact that he was trained under Jerome Glaser, M.D., who initiated the pediatric allergy clinic and program at URMC in the 1940s.

In a piece Dreyfuss wrote titled “The Rochester, New York Tradition: Allergy and Allergists,” the pediatric allergist highlighted the many successes of allergists at URMC. In 1946, for instance, Glaser was granted one of the first certificates in the new subspecialty and became one of the initial members of the subspecialty board of pediatric allergy for the American Board of Pediatrics. In addition, Glaser and Douglas E. Johnstone, M.D., Glaser’s successor to the position of director of the pediatric allergy clinic at URMC, were both charter members of the section of allergy of the American Academy of Pediatrics.  Johnstone was also past president of the International Association of Asthmology and also of the American Association of Certified Allergists.

“We are so very grateful to our friend and colleague, Dr. Eric Dreyfuss, for giving us the opportunity to establish novel research and education programs, expand our clinical services, and lure the best and the brightest physician-scientists and trainees in pediatric allergy to upstate New York. We are especially grateful as well for the chance it affords us to honor the outstanding founders of the field of pediatric allergy many of whom hailed from right here in Rochester, NY,” said Schor.

In addition to funding the endowment for a professorship at Golisano Children’s Hospital, Dreyfuss has also established a donor-advised fund, a charitable giving vehicle created so Dreyfuss can more easily manage his gifts to URMC named the Dr. Eric M. Dreyfuss Fund. Half of this fund has been pledged to Golisano Children’s Hospital at URMC. Dreyfuss has also been very generous in donations to the Wilmot Cancer Center at URMC.

Through his medical career and his charitable gifts to URMC, Dreyfuss has proven himself to be a remarkable individual, who is fully dedicated to the Rochester-area community and solidly invested in the future of our children. To learn more about establishing an endowed professorship, please contact Scott Rasmussen at (585) 273-5932 or srasmussen@admin.rochester.edu.

Learn more about endowing a professorship.