When Stephen Bittel, founder and chair of the real estate investment firm Terranova Corp., learned in 2014 that Mindy McIlroy, the president of his company and a close friend, had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, he immediately stepped into action, doing everything he could to support her and fund efforts to advance developments in Parkinson’s care by supporting Parkinson’s Foundation Centers of Excellence across the United and globally.
Originally, we were very focused on people getting diagnosed, getting them to the right doctors, and getting the proper care,” Bittel said. But, he explained, one day he had an epiphany: “I realized we had this all wrong. If we wanted to make a difference, we needed to focus on finding a cure, not just care.”
To that end, Bittel has made a $1 million gift to the Miller School’s Division of Movement Disorders in the Department of Neurology. The majority of this gift will create the Movement Disorders Clinical and Research Support Fund, which has been earmarked to support a bioengineer and a patient navigator position. The remainder will create the Stephen H. Bittel Fellowship in Movement Disorders, to be awarded each year to a physician who is pursuing subspecialty training in movement disorders.
Full story: https://magazine.med.miami.edu/moving-forward/
