Being selected as the winner of The NASCAR Foundation’s Betty Jane France Humanitarian Award presented by Nationwide in 2015 was certainly a proud moment for Jeff Hanson – and Children’s Tumor Foundation, the charity Jeff represents.
“What this means to me … is I’m thrilled, I’m honored,” Hanson said after being announced as the winner at the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Awards in Las Vegas in December 2015. “It means so much to me, that I can help the Children’s Tumor Foundation with a $100,000 donation.
And just a short five months later, the donation is being put to work. In early May 2016, Children’s Tumor Foundation announced a groundbreaking initiative – a new consortium for schwannomatosis, the rarest and least studied form of neurofibromatosis – aimed at addressing the intractable pain experienced by many with neurofibromatosis (NF).
“We’re all incredibly excited about this consortium and grateful for the funding from The NASCAR Foundation that helped bring it to fruition,” Jill Beck, director of Children’s Tumor Foundation’s Racing4Research Program said. “The number of children and adults that will be positively affected by this research is vast – it far exceeds the NF community as pain is pain, so advances in pain research will benefit the broader community at large.”
