A Pitt alumni couple committed $1.5M to the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research

Charles Chabal III (MED '82) and Sharon W. Chabal (NURS '80) have pledged to create a $1.5 million fund to support the work of the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

"Traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest and the other devastating events studied by the Safar Center often come out of nowhere and change the lives of the patients and their families forever," said Anantha Shekhar, John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine and senior vice chancellor for the health sciences at Pitt. "We thank the Chabals for their commitment to driving research in this very important field and providing training for the next generation of researchers."

The Safar Center's research programs include traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest and resuscitation, neurocritical care, child abuse, therapeutic hypothermia, hemorrhagic shock, combat casualty care and rehabilitation of central nervous system injury. Investigators work closely with the departments of Critical Care Medicine, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Neurological Surgery, Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics at both the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, as well as national and international collaborators.

"We are immensely grateful to Charles and Sharon for creating the Dr. Charles Chabal and Sharon Workman Chabal BSN MSN and Family Endowment for Breakthroughs in Resuscitation Research," said Robert S.B. Clark, interim director of the Safar Center. "This gift will provide vital support to the Safar Center, to facilitate the groundbreaking work of our outstanding team of faculty, staff and trainees working across the fields of acute brain injury and resuscitation medicine in its broadest sense."

The center was founded in 1979 by CPR pioneer Peter Safar. Initially known as the International Resuscitation Research Center, it was renamed after Safar in 1994 to recognize his innumerable contributions to the field of resuscitation medicine. Charles Chabal trained with Safar in the 1980s, contributing to seminal work on the resuscitation of cold-water drowning victims using extracorporeal support.

"In gratitude for that opportunity, which provided my foundational experience in anesthesiology research, I am moved to give back to the center. I have always had the utmost respect for the work being done at the Safar Center, and Sharon and I are continually impressed by the staff's dedication to advancing resuscitation science," Charles Chabal said.

"This is such important work in a field that can impact any family, at any time," Sharon Chabal added. "It makes us immensely proud to know we are playing a role, if even a small one, in helping improve lives."

The center is an 11,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art research facility located in the John G. Rangos Research Center on the campus of UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. It houses the laboratories of research-scientists and clinician-scientists working across a broad spectrum of fields important to resuscitation medicine. The endowed fund will support a wide range of activities within the center, including but not limited to sustaining state-of-the-art translational research and equipment, training, mentorship and travel to conferences.