Dolly Parton Steps Up for Research
June 16, 2022
Country music legend Dolly Parton is donating $1 million to pediatric infectious disease research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. This follows other gifts she has made to the center, including $1 million in April 2020 for COVID vaccine research. The donations illustrate how philanthropy plays a distinctive role in sustaining and shaping America’s scientific enterprise. As Robert W. Conn writes in Issues, philanthropy can bring new perspectives to science policy and strategy, especially by underwriting scientific ideas well before they are sufficiently developed to earn government support.