Dr. Michael Everest And His Extremely Fruitful 10-year Long Liaison With USC

    LOS ANGELES, CA, July 24, 2020 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Dr. Michael Everest has long been a familiar name in the graduate medical schools of the country---thanks chiefly to his various charitable initiatives aimed at supporting and actively promoting graduate medical education in the US. These initiatives are carried out on behalf of The Edwin Everest Foundation, a non-profit charity organization founded by Late Dr. Edwin Everest, father of Agata Everest.

On various occasions over the last decade, Dr. Michael Everest had spoken of his father's passion for helping and furthering graduate medical students in the country. Dr. Edwin Everest firmly believed that promoting medical research and training could be of immense help to the society as a whole, especially medical education that concerns itself with both physical and mental aspects of a disease or condition.

"His ultimate motivation was to touch people's lives in a meaningful manner," comments his son while speaking about his father's passion (as well as his deeds) regarding the promotion and development of medical education, research, and training.

One of the first substantial donations made by the Foundation included a $ 1 million unrestricted long-term gift to the Keck School of Medicine at USC. This was a 10-year commitment, and the funds from the Foundation have since supported a generation of volunteer postdoctoral trainees at the Keck School. The very first person to benefit from The Everest Foundation Fund at Keck School was a postdoctoral fellow at the School's Department of Otolaryngology and whose research topic involved head and neck surgery.

The Fund exclusively works with medical institutes, and the donations are made in the form of research fellowships, short and long-term grants, residency programs, and the like. Medical institutions that have benefitted from the charitable initiatives of the Everest Foundation include, among others, Stanford University, Texas Tech University, University of Texas, Northwestern University, University of California Davis, University of California-Irvine and New York Medical College.

Dr. Michael Everest mentions that they donate heavily in the research field primarily because he firmly believes that with the advancement of technology, clinical skills will soon come in the forefront of medicinal practice. This is why, he mentions, the Fund shows utmost dedication in supporting many different clinical trials carried out in top medical institutions across the country. At the same time, Dr. Michael Everest says that he believes that ground-breaking research activities in fields such as stem cell research and nanotechnology point towards a paradigm shift in how diagnosis and treatment of diseases will be approached in the future.

It is also noteworthy that in addition to supporting top medical facilities across the country, the Foundation also actively supports several community-based hospitals for whom it is difficult to broker private funding. According to Mrs. Agata Everest, many of these community hospitals and institutions have the potential to contribute to paradigm-changing research. However, since these institutions depend chiefly on government funding, many of their promising initiatives fail to reach fruition, mainly due to a lack of funds.

It is for these reasons, Dr. Everest maintains that the Foundation has started to provide long-term support to these community hospitals as well.

To come back to The Everest Foundation's liaison with USC, Dr. Everest, an American-Indian by origin, provided some background information regarding what inspired him to form such a long-term relationship with the institute. He says that he felt inspired by the devout passion and dedication of Dr. Uttam Sinha, the then residency program director of the Otolaryngology Department of Keck School. He says that it was the amazing research work performed, under the guidance of Dr. Sinha, Residency Program Director of the Department of Otolaryngology and by a Ph.D. student at the department that helped him make his mind to begin a long relationship with USC.

And to go by the words of Dr. Edward Crandall, Chair of the Department of Medicine at USC, the funds allocated by The Everest Foundation through all these years have not only facilitated outstanding research experiences for doctoral students but have also helped the Keck School faculty with whom the said students had worked.

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