On Jan. 16, 2024, the Department of Surgery hosted an investiture ceremony to celebrate Dr. Peter Nichol, Associate Professor in the Division of Pediatric Surgery and the Cars Curing Kids Professor for Pediatric Surgical Disease Research. Dr. Rebecca Minter, chair of the Department of Surgery, gave welcome remarks at the ceremony and then presented Dr. Nichol with his medallion. The investiture ceremony concluded with a presentation by Dr. Nichol titled “How the Confluence of a Midlife Crisis ‘Car Accident’ and My Stubborn Personality Led to Something Wonderful: A Professorship (With a Lot of Help).”
Cars Curing Kids is dedicated to funding and supporting causes that improve health outcomes in the lives of children in southern Wisconsin. Funds are raised through automotive centric events and are committed directly to combating childhood disease and healthcare challenges. The goal of Cars Curing Kids is to make an immediate impact by fueling children’s healthcare research.
The creation of Cars Curing Kids was inspired by McKenah, a patient, who, in 2010, was born prematurely and developed an infection that destroyed her entire intestine. This left her completely dependent on intravenous nutrition to survive. She was transferred to the care of Dr. Nichol, an expert in Short Bowel Syndrome. Unfortunately, despite the expert care that McKenah was receiving, she succumbed to liver failure in April 2013, a common, and, at that time, unpreventable complication of intravenous nutrition. In December 2013, McKenah’s parents, Kris and Jeff, presented Dr. Nichol with a series of checks given to Jeff by his co-workers who implored Jeff to start a foundation in honor of McKenah. In April of the following year, Dr. Nichol assembled a group of automobile enthusiasts and they started to form the Cars Curing Kids organization.
Thank you to all of our wonderful donors who have supported this tremendous initiative! To learn more about the Cars Curing Kids program and how you can help, click here.