Why are we here and what impact can we have? A reflection of and vision for biomedical research funding and philanthropic and non-profit involvement [Fall 2025 Members Meeting]

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This session explores a historical view of how the biomedical research enterprise has been funded and how philanthropic and non-profit organizations fit into this enterprise. Speakers will address the advent of government support for science and its infrastructure in the United States along with how that research funding intertwines with the non-profit and for-profit sectors. The session will also explore the ways that philanthropic and non-profit organizations have led, supplemented, and influenced the biomedical research landscape. From the talks and discussion, participants will understand the overall structures for biomedical research funding, the history of how such structures came to be, and the role philanthropic and non-profit organizations fulfill in achieving beneficial impact for humankind.

Moderator

Kaitlin Davis, PhD, Director of Translational Sciences, Additional Ventures

Kaitlin Davis is the Director of Translational Sciences at Additional Ventures, where she leads translational research programs in rare and under-resourced disease areas, focusing on single ventricle congenital heart disease. Her work focuses on bridging the gap between discovery and clinical translation by designing flexible, milestone-driven funding models and building the infrastructure necessary to advance promising science toward patient impact.

Prior to leading translational initiatives, Kaitlin spent five years shaping Additional Ventures’ foundational science programs, drawing on her scientific training to identify strategic opportunities and field-wide gaps. She holds a PhD in molecular virology from Johns Hopkins and has been an active contributor to the American Society for Virology, including in as an elected member of the society’s governing council. Kaitlin brings a systems-level perspective to funding design, grounded in both deep domain expertise and a commitment to long-term ecosystem development.

Speakers

Eric Abrahamson, PhD, PI/Fellow, History of Science Philanthropy, Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and Study of Business Enterprise, Johns Hopkins University

Eric John Abrahamson is the principal investigator for Catalyst for Innovation, a two-year study of the role of philanthropy in the innovation system in the United States.

The author of numerous books, including Beyond Charity: A Century of Philanthropic Innovation (Rockefeller Foundation, 2013), Building Home: Howard F. Ahmanson and the Politics of the American Dream (University of California Press, 2013), Spirited Commitment: The Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation (with Roderick McLeod, McGill-Queens University Press, 2010); and Anytime, Anywhere: Entrepreneurship and the Creation of a Wireless World (with Louis Galambos, Cambridge University Press, 2002) and internal histories for the Mastercard Foundation (2016) and the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation (2017); as well as case studies for the Legler Benbough Foundation in San Diego (2020). He is coauthor of Democracy & Philanthropy: The Rockefeller Foundation and the American Experiment (with Barbara Shubinski and Sam Hurst, Rockefeller Foundation, 2013) and edited four other books in the Rockefeller Foundation Centennial series. He was co-winner of the 2016 Excellence in Consulting Award from the National Council on Public History.

As a social entrepreneur, Abrahamson led the relaunch of the Black Hills Area Community Foundation and founded the Black Hills Knowledge Network, projects that received funding from the Bush Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In 2020, in association with the Rockefeller Archive Center, he established Investing in the Good, a project to document the history of impact investing funded by the Charles and Ann Johnson Foundation. Abrahamson also serves as a director of the John T. Vucurevich Foundation.

Abrahamson received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 2003. His dissertation explored the relationship between innovation and regulation in the development of mobile telephony in the United States from 1947-1984. He also earned a B.A. in History from the University of California, Berkeley and a Masters in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.

Victoria Harden, PhD, Biomedical Sciences History Consultant, former Director of the Office of NIH History and the Stetten Museum

Victoria A. Harden retired in January 2006 as Director of the Office of NIH History and the Stetten Museum at the National Institutes of Health, an office she created during the 1986-87 observance of the NIH centennial.

Dr. Harden took her B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in American History at Emory University (1966; 1983) and conducted much of her dissertation research as a fellow at the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution. During a post-doctoral year at the Institute for the History of Medicine of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, she was supported by a grant from the National Library of Medicine and completed work on her first book, Inventing the NIH: Federal Biomedical Research Policy, 1887-1937, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1986.

From 1984-1986, Dr. Harden was on the staff of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), researching and writing Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever: History of a Twentieth-Century Disease. It was published in 1990, also by Johns Hopkins University Press, and won the 1991 Henry Adams prize of the Society for History in the Federal Government for the best book written about the history of the federal government.

In 1989 and 1993 she organized conferences on the history of AIDS. The proceedings were published as AIDS and the Historian (1991) and AIDS and the Public Debate: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives(1995). In June 2001, twenty of the 40+ oral histories she conducted with NIH staff who responded to AIDS were made publicly available on a website commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the first publication about AIDS: “In Their Own Words: NIH Researchers Recall the Early Years of AIDS”

In January 2012, her history of the AIDS pandemic, AIDS at 30: A History was published by Potomac Books, Inc.

Dr. Harden also oversaw the creation and development of the Stetten Museum at NIH, which collects and exhibits biomedical research instruments and memorabilia related to the National Institutes of Health. A series of exhibits prepared for the NIH centennial, titled “Windows into NIH History” won the 1989 John Wesley Powell prize for historic display about the history of federal activities. The website of the Office of NIH History now makes many of the exhibits available in a virtual format.

Dr. Harden is an active member of many professional societies. In 2006 she was awarded the Herbert Feis prize for outstanding contributions to public history by the American Historical Association, and in 2007, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Association for the History of Medicine. In 2013 and 2014 she received the Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Roger R. Trask awards of the Society for History in the Federal Government for outstanding contributions to the mission of the Society and to the study of the federal government’s history. In 2023, the National Institutes of Health created and named an annual lectureship in NIH history in her honor.

She lives at the Riderwood Village Retirement Community in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she teaches a course on the history of medicine.

Carrie Patton, National Senior Director of Research and Grants, American Heart Association

Carrie has been with the American Heart Association for 29 years, currently serving as a national senior director within the AHA Office of Science.  She is responsible for overseeing the AHA’s strategic and board-commissioned research initiatives including networks, team science, and other large research grant programs.  Carrie directs a staff team responsible for research program management and supporting the Oversight Advisory Committees comprised of science volunteer leaders.  Additionally, she plays an active role in staffing the Research Committee and other assigned task forces and working groups.  Carrie is the primary liaison to the Mission Advancement team at the AHA, and collaborates with development staff to raise major gifts for funding research.  She is married with two grown daughters, a son-in-law, two grandsons, and three rescue dogs who all keep her busy outside her AHA life.