Our Impact

Since its inception, the Foundation has kept true to its mission to facilitate support among families and individuals affected by Kawasaki disease. The Foundation has sponsored an annual educational parent symposium event each year to accomplish this goal. The Foundation’s first parent symposium was held in Boston, Massachusetts, and has been held across the country over the past twenty years, including San Jose, California, and San Diego, California. The event is provided at no cost to all attendees.

Since 2014, the Foundation has provided live and on-demand recordings of the annual KD parent symposium held at the University of California San Diego. The annual event is held in-person and online, and the recording is added to our YouTube channel for on-demand watching. Using technology to achieve our goal of increasing educational outreach to parents worldwide has increased our impact. Our on-demand recordings have over 40,000 views, and over 1,500 viewers have watched the live events each year.

The Kawasaki Disease Foundation Bridges program evolved to accomplish one of the Foundation’s primary goals: providing support to families dealing with the diagnosis of Kawasaki disease. The program matches families currently facing KD with trained Support Volunteers. The volunteers are generally parents of children who have KD or adult patients who have recovered from KD. The volunteers are screened and trained by experienced support professionals. The role of the support volunteer is to provide personal insight that may help cope with KD. Since its inception, the KDF Bridges program has linked over 1,200 families with a Support Volunteer.

Since 2000, the Foundation has provided several grants to accelerate the pace of Kawasaki disease research. Most significantly, the Foundation made a grant to the Kawasaki Disease Research Center (KDRC) at the University of California San Diego to grow and support a Kawasaki Disease biorepository. Today, the UCSD biorepository is the largest DNA bank of KD samples in North America. The valuable samples stored in the KD Biorepository have provided the necessary patient samples to support various research projects.

Most recently, the biorepository and its linked database were used by collaborators at Stanford University to devise a diagnostic algorithm and specific biomarker test that will be formally tested in the Emergency Dept. at Rady Children’s Hospital, San Diego. As another example of the importance of the biorepository as a resource for KD research, the understanding of the genetic basis of susceptibility to KD and aneurysm formation has relied heavily on DNA and RNA samples collected, curated, and stored at the KDRC at the University of California San Diego.

Recently, the Foundation approved a grant to support Seattle Children’s Hospital Foundation – KD Kids Guild for its Genetic Prediction for Treatment Resistance in Kawasaki disease project. The study could improve the quality of life for children with Kawasaki disease at risk of developing coronary artery aneurysms. The researchers aim to identify genetic biomarkers that predict which patients will not respond to the standard treatment and thus have a higher risk of developing coronary artery problems.

The Foundation has donated over half a million dollars to advance Kawasaki disease research.

In 2011, the Kawasaki Disease Foundation presented a resolution to the 111th Congress, 2nd Session, requesting the designation of January 26th as “National Kawasaki Disease Awareness Day.” Senator Jim Webb of Virginia and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii sponsored the official declaration. Since then, the Foundation has recognized the annual awareness day with an online campaign supported by groups, families, and individuals worldwide. In 2019, the annual “National Kawasaki Disease Awareness” campaign reached over 1 million Facebook users.

In connection with the KD Awareness Day, the Foundation published a poster depicting the tell-tale signs of the disease to be distributed to doctor’s offices, hospitals, and clinics across the country. The poster is distributed on National Kawasaki Awareness Day by KD parents at Awareness events nationwide. The poster is available (in English and Spanish) for shipment year-round upon request. Since 2011, we have distributed over 45,000 posters (at no cost) across the United States.

In 2019, the Foundation launched the KDF Tote Bag project to support families. The Kawasaki Disease Foundation created the bags for newly diagnosed patients and their families. The bags are intended for children hospitalized with KD and include several care items for the parent/guardian, information on KD, resources and the Foundation, and a teddy bear for the patient. 100 bags were delivered to the following hospitals:

• • • Rady Children’s Hospital, San Diego, California
    • Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, Palo Alto, California
    • Brandon Regional Hospital, Brandon, Florida
    • St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital, Tampa, Florida
    • Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts
    • Bryn Mawr Hospital, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
    • Seattle Children’s Hospital, Seattle, Washington