Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory University Cystic Fibrosis Care Center Receives Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s 2024 Outstanding Care Center Partnership Award

ATLANTA (November 26, 2024) — The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation awarded Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory University’s Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Care Center the Outstanding Care Center Partnership Award during the annual North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference (NACFC) in Boston. The Children’s and Emory CF Care Center serves more pediatric and adult CF patients than almost any other CF care center in the country.

Each year, the CF Foundation chooses care centers who have gone above and beyond to collaborate with their local chapters to help support CF patient families within their communities. Some examples of outstanding partnership activities include volunteering at events, connecting patients with chapter staff and helping facilitate CF Foundation education days and events.

This past year, Rachel Linnemann, MD, Director of the CF Care Center at Children’s, facilitated a Great Strides Walk sponsorship on behalf of Children’s and helped build a team of staff and patients to participate in the walk. Care Center representatives spoke at several chapter fundraising events including the Wine and Roses Patron Party and the Insure the Cure meeting. These community outreach efforts contributed to the achievement.

The Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory University Cystic Fibrosis Care Center is part of the Cystic Fibrosis Center of Excellence, a comprehensive program excelling in clinical care, research, discovery science, and education and outreach. The multi-disciplinary team is made up of pediatric-trained pulmonologists, dietitians, social workers, respiratory therapists, a gastroenterologist, an endocrinologist, a physical therapist, a genetic counselor, a cystic fibrosis mental health coordinator and a pharmacist.

“Our center is honored to be recognized by the CF Foundation for the work we have done to support patients in the Atlanta area and beyond,” said Dr. Linnemann. “We will continue our dedication to serving the CF community, enhance awareness, and drive impactful support for CF research and patient care.”

Children’s and Emory have established the Center for CF and Airways Disease Research, a collaborative research team centered around translational and basic research primarily focused on CF and asthma. The center supports research projects and research cores that draw together investigators with various expertise to solve critical problems associated with CF disease. One such project includes results of a clinical trial conducted at Children’s that shows individuals with rare genetic causes of CF may benefit from a new treatment option: a medication called elexacaftor-tezacaftor-ivacator, also known by the brand name Trikafta. The findings from the study, funded by the CF Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were published in August 2024 in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, a world-leading respiratory medicine and critical care journal. Dr. Linnemann co-presented the results at the CF Foundation’s Therapeutics Development Network during an April 2024 plenary session. Experiments to test leading-edge pluripotent stem cells as predictors of patient responsiveness are also being evaluated.

Cystic Fibrosis is a genetic disease that affects the lungs and digestive systems by making fluids and mucus thick and sticky. Patients with this disease experience lung infections and have difficulty breathing. They also have trouble digesting and absorbing food which can contribute to inadequate growth and lack of nutrients. Approximately 30 babies are born with CF each year in the state of Georgia.