Our Foundation team are keen to hear about your personal and family disease interests and to work with you to ensure your support can accelerate discovery and its application into healthcare.
Our research spans diseases as diverse as breast and ovarian cancer, type 1 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, lipoedema, heart disease, liver disease, Fanconi anaemia and osteoporosis.
Please contact us to discuss your disease-specific interests: [email protected] or (03) 9231 2480.
Transformative philanthropy
“Ugly” is how SVI supporter Bernadette Dennis characterises ovarian cancer, the insidious disease that claimed the lives of both her mother and sister.
“In 1989, my mother was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer. She passed away on Christmas Eve that year. Then, in 2003, my sister Pauline was also diagnosed at stage four, with a different form of the same cancer. After several attempts at chemotherapy, doctors advised her there was nothing else that could be done,” Bernadette recalls.
“What I realised at that time was that there was not a lot of support for research or new treatments for this cancer. Although there was a 15-year gap between my mother and sister being diagnosed, it was clear that little had really changed.”
“My sister Trish started raising funds to support a clinical trials nurse, and some of Pauline’s friends and I joined in this ultimately successful campaign.”
This first determined foray into fundraising led Bernadette to become passionate about the transformative impact of philanthropy. She is now a member of the SVI Foundation Board and of the SVI Discovery Fund.
“For the many families who have experienced the loss of loved ones to ovarian cancer, it is wonderful to see this specialist research happening at SVI,” says Bernadette. “I know every member of my family will endorse the need for more awareness and discovery, with the ambition of better care, life-expectancy and quality of life for women like my mother and sister.”