An endowment gift that fuels research and mentorship of some of the future’s most promising cardiologists

BY AUDREY MAYNARD

For James C. Fang, MD, medicine is all about people.

“It may sound like a medical school essay, but you’ve got to love people–nice ones, difficult ones, young or old, you’ve got to love people in all their dimensions.”

It’s his inherent love for people that called Fang to a career in academic medicine. Since 2013, Fang has served as chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah. Fang is responsible for building highly skilled teams that provide comprehensive, personalized, and cost-effective care to patients, as well as overseeing the research, education, and clinical care programs within his division.

The gift of an endowment to support his research has been an important factor in the execution of the extensive work he does.

Early on in his medical career, Fang planned to become a surgeon, but his residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital opened his eyes to the one-on-one impact he could make through cardiovascular medicine.

“At Hopkins, life was so much about the people,” he said. “I met some incredible cardiologists there, and I realized how much could be done for patients at the bedside. I just thought it was a remarkable profession because, as cardiologists, we listen to the heart, we feel for the heart.”

In 2017, Fang was introduced to a new patient, June Morris, the groundbreaking Utah entrepreneur and founder of Morris Air. Morris, who was then 86 years old, came to Fang seeking a second opinion for heart complications she suffered after contracting pneumonia. June’s granddaughter and caregiver, Zenia Frendt, was with her for her initial physician’s visit and felt strongly that more could be done to treat her grandmother’s condition.

“It felt like they just looked at her and said, ‘Old lady, 80s, heart problems. She’s gone–that’s the breaks. Here’s the normal meds that everyone takes. Have a nice day,” Frendt said.

Fang, however, introduced Morris and Frendt to a promising medication based on emerging research, which ultimately gave Morris four more years of life.

“Dr. Fang listened,” Frendt said. “Rather than see her grandkids reach nine, my grandmother saw them reach 13. That was four more Christmases. Four more years with family. Four more years to get to know her great-grandchildren.”

The Morris family was so grateful for the care June received at the University of Utah that they helped build an endowment through their family foundation to support Fang’s work. Frendt, who serves as director of the Morris Family Foundation, is driven to leverage the power of her family’s resources to affect positive change in the health care system.

James C. Fang, MD

“The more I think about my story, the more frustrated I get with how broken the system is nationally and how hard it is for people to find the right kind of care for their families,” she said.

As both a physician and administrator, Fang hears Frendt’s frustration and believes that academic medical centers are the solution to changing the American health care landscape for the better.

“As an academic medical center, we have a unique and important social responsibility,” he said. “The public looks to the University of Utah to make health care better. But we don’t feel like we are really delivering good care unless, number one, we’re trying to make it better, and number two, we’re teaching other people to do it well.”

For Fang, a key factor to achieving this is time. In a profit-driven system where health care providers are often paid for their level of productivity, doctors struggle to devote the time their patients need and deserve.

“The more patients you see, the more tests you order, the better you get paid–it just makes no sense at all,” he said. “But patients understand the time you spend with them. That’s what they want of you. They just want your time, and they want you to listen.”

Philanthropic partners, like the Morris family, are therefore essential to bridging the gap between the clinical bottom line and helping U of U Health fulfill its institutional mission. For Fang specifically, he has utilized the funds generated from the endowment the Morris Family Foundation built to invest in his heart failure research program and, most pressing to him, to recruit and mentor some of the most promising young cardiologists in the nation.

“At the end of the day, there are dollars at stake, and it takes resources to do things,” he said. “And this is why friends like the Morris family have been so wonderful to us. Because without their philanthropy and generosity, we couldn’t get nearly as much done.”

Frendt recognizes that one foundation cannot fix an entire system, but she believes that investing in scholarships, research, and the next generation of health care providers will eventually add up to better health outcomes for everyone.
“We want to support the people who are willing to listen to families, to dig into the latest research, and make a difference even for one family or one patient,” she said.

Fang is humbled by the recognition he has received from the Morris family and looks forward to using the resources they’ve given to help realize their philanthropic vision.

“Believe me, I am so thankful for the Morris family’s confidence in us to move the needle on this issue. If we don’t move it, nobody will,” he said. “We have the greatest collection of faculty here—wonderful people who are truly committed to our mission of making a difference.”