Early Path Medical Consultation Services

The Dische Fund

A Tribute to Susan Ivy Allen Hime
March 27, 1964 ~ June 24, 2003

As a rule, the content of this website is kept impersonal, "just the facts, ma'am". But sometimes to do good work, you have to get personal, to take things personally. So here goes.

This fund began with M. Renate Dische, MD, my colleague. This fund's research will continue through the vision of Susan Ivy Allen Hime, my patient, and my friend. I met Susan and her husband David, as I meet most of my patients, in their time of deepest grief. Susan and David came to New York on several occasions to pursue tests that we hoped would give them their best chance at a subsequent successful pregnancy. They were excited about our research in the causes of fetal growth restriction and preterm birth, since their beloved daughter, Alison Ivy, had suffered both. We found that Susan's arteries were unusually stiff. She also found that a very short course of a novel treatment was able to make her blood flow much more normal. She was looking forward to "trying her good blood flow out" with another child.

Susan and I became friends, and tried to plan to meet at research meetings, where Dische-Funded presentations were shown. Somehow we were always too busy, and it never got arranged. That did not lessen our bond.

Last week, I received a message that a caller had requested information as to how to contribute to this fund. Two days later, as I began to open the dozens of letters addressed to the Dische Fund, I became aware that the influx of support came with the loss of a dear friend in a tragic hiking accident. David tells me she died at her happiest, with her strongest affections and love from and to friends and family, her greatest self-confidence.

The Dische Fund has provided resources for students at all levels of training, from college students to post-graduate fellows. The fund has helped to provide that "little extra", be it reagents or a computer, that made the difference to them in being able to develop an idea (the hypothesis), figure out how that idea could be tested (the study design), do the tests (experimentation) and analyze the results to confirm their initial idea. Or not confirm their hypothesis, as the case may have been. We have worked, with Renate's memory in mind, to develop and begin to test novel ways of measuring placentas. This may not sound very exciting, but we're very excited that these measures appear to be able to "explain" or "account for" the majority of birthweight variance in a study population, thanks to the support of the University of North Carolina.

This is important, because birthweight, that is, birthweights greater or lesser than what would be considered within normal range, seems to be a resilient and robust predictor of a host of adult diseases, manifested in heart disease, obesity, diabetes and cancer. If we can understand what influences birthweight—and possibly when in gestation this happens—we may be better able to develop methods to check fetal well-being and help a baby before birth have the greatest chance of a healthy long life.

As of July 1, 2003, I am again on the Faculty at Columbia, now in Epidemiology in the Mailman School of Public Health, to complete a 5 -year NIH Career Development Award in which my group and I will further test and evaluate modes of placental assessment to try to improve our understanding of fetal life, and its relationship to adult health.

There is no way this award would have come to me without the intangible (spiritual) support given by Renate, Susan and David Hime and all those who have contributed to this fund (including my mom). The tangible support of money funded the placental morphometry and image analysis that provided the best evidence that we were on the right track, a track that is predictive of future important research gains. We will continue to keep you all posted as we move forward.