Pain at SickKids: more manageable, less chronic
“Tell me what nobody is funding.” That’s the challenge Larry Wasser put to prospective partners as he and his wife, Marla, looked to expand their giving.
The Wassers’ philanthropy was first spurred by a 1995 newspaper story. A 13 year-old girl born without joints in her jaw needed surgery. They made a donation, which enabled Dr. Gerry Baker at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital to operate. The Wassers had found their cause: pain. Specifically, chronic pain.
As Larry Wasser says, “Chronic pain affects around 25% of the North American population. Its effects on people’s lives are enormous: day-to-day functioning, relationship difficulties, work and job problems, even marital breakup.”
The way forward in chronic pain lay in “getting inside the problem”, through expert diagnoses over time by experienced clinicians, for lifelong results. The need was a dedicated program. Mount Sinai’s Wasser Pain Management Centre, established through a 1999 donation from the Wassers, began to deliver tangible results.
But, knowing that continuity of care, across the lifespan, was key, the Wassers knew there was a missing piece. Mount Sinai dealt with adults. As Larry Wasser says, “We had to take our success across the street.” To SickKids.
"Tell me what nobody is funding"
Dr. Stephen Brown was there from the beginning, sharing and shaping the vision of how SickKids could address pain. Dr. Mark Crawford, Chief of the Department of Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine at SickKids, has been the Wassers’ partner in growing capacity – more dedicated staff, more space, and more patients seen.
Results are impressive. First and foremost, more children are living and thriving, with less pain. Wait times have been reduced. And, significantly, proof of concept has led to more funding from government, because of demonstrable down-the-road savings to the system when pain is successfully addressed early.
Larry Wasser knows the value of a leader – he had not sought to have his family name on Mount Sinai’s Wasser Pain Management Centre, but had been convinced that doing so would create a destination, and encourage other donors. So, in 2015 the Wassers made a decision about a similar donation they’d made to SickKids: to endow the Wasser Family Chair in Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine at SickKids – creating a destination for a medical leader in the field of children’s pain.
The Wassers have three healthy sons, whose only treatment at SickKids was a visit or two to the ER. But the Wassers want every child to enjoy the healthy lives their sons have had. For Larry and Marla, what matters most is,“knowing we’ve helped thousands and thousands of patients, both young and old, to be pain free.”
