a tax exempt charity with 501(c)3 IRS status
Started in 2000 as the 'United Sydney Reich Charity'
and dedicated to raise funds
to benefit research and developement for the
prevention, intervention and eventual cure of Cerebral Palsy.
Why the United Sydney Association and our Annual Charity Golf Outing?
Brain injury (cerebral palsy aka cp) effects about 1 of 500 children and 10% of all premature newborns. CP has been on the rise since the 1960's. In the '60's, medical science was unable to save the lives of the many fragile newborns under 3 lbs. Today, doctors are capable of saving infants as small as 1 lb or less. Unfortunately, brain injury is occuring due to the lack of oxygen reaching the immature brain. More children are effected by CP than diabetes, down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, leukemia, autism and many other high profile conditions. CP has the highest lifetime cost of any condition arising from early brain injury or birth defect. The NIH estimates the national cost is aproximately $5 billion...and climbing.
Well, the specialists at Children's Hospital, Boston, directed by Dr. Adre du Plessis have established the LifeBridge Program to help. The LifeBridge Program supports research and clinical developement on the prevention of CP by way of newly developed monitoring of the newborn brain for oxygen saturation with near infared spectrocity (Boston is the 1st to use this in clinical studies). The final goal for the LifeBridge Program is the cure for cerebral palsy. The research in brain cell regeneration is being done by Dr. Jeff Macklis and has already seen some success in birds and small mammals.
Our 1st outing was on 8/21/00 at the Glastonbury Hills Country Club. We succeeded in raising over $28,000. Our 2nd outing, on 8/13/01, succeeded in raising $36,000 for these great reseach & developement programs
