St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is launching the biggest strategic investment in its nearly 60-year history, committing $11.5 billion during the next 6 years to accelerate research and treatment globally for children with catastrophic diseases. The Six-Year St. Jude Strategic Plan focuses on the expansion of patient care and clinical and laboratory-based research related to cancer, blood disorders, neurologic diseases, and infectious diseases. The plan calls for an additional 1,400 jobs; the expenditure of $1.9 billion in new construction, renovation, and capital needs; and the development of new research areas.
The endeavor builds on the research hospital’s prior strategic plan. Within the past 6 years, St. Jude has advanced fundamental, clinical, and translational research. Access to quality care—once a dream for children in low- and middle-income countries—is beginning to be realized through the institution’s reimagined international outreach efforts, which involve seven regions of the world. On campus, St. Jude accepted nearly 20% more new patients with cancer, increased faculty by 30% and staff by 23%, and embarked on several large-scale construction projects.
Key Areas of Plan
The New Plan continues this momentum by concentrating on five areas: fundamental science, childhood cancer, pediatric catastrophic diseases, global impact, and workforce and workplace culture.
St. Jude will hire nearly 70 new faculty members, plus supporting laboratory staff, to work in research across 22 departments. These investigators will have the freedom to pursue the type of conceptually driven research that leads to tomorrow’s clinical advances.
During the next 6 years, St. Jude will invest more than $250 million to expand state-of-the-art technology and resources available to scientists and clinicians in their search to understand why pediatric catastrophic diseases arise, spread, and resist treatments.
St. Jude will invest $3.7 billion during the next 6 years to expand cancer-focused research and related clinical care. These efforts will center on raising survival rates for the highest-risk cancers and for children with relapsed diseases, while simultaneously improving quality of life for survivors of pediatric cancer.
In the United States, more than 80% of children diagnosed with cancer will be cured. In contrast, 80% of children with cancer live in limited-resource countries, where a mere 20% survive their disease. To address this, St. Jude will more than triple its investment in its international efforts during the next 6 years, an investment of more than $470 million.
St. Jude will expand research and treatment programs to advance cures for childhood catastrophic diseases. The $1.1 billion, 6-year investment includes work in nonmalignant diseases, such as sickle cell disease; a new laboratory-based research program in infectious diseases that affect children worldwide; and a new research and clinical program to better understand and treat pediatric neurologic diseases.
