The Jack and Gitta Nagel Foundation has given $5 million to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to create a heart surgery fellowship at the hospital’s Smidt Heart Institute. The Institute is home to the No. 1 adult heart transplant program in the nation as well as No. 1 in California for cardiology and heart surgery and No. 3 in the nation.
The Jack and Gitta Nagel and Family Endowed Cardiac Surgery Fellowship Program will be leading a new approach to cardiac training and focus on lung and heart transplantations, heart valve repair and improving hybrid cardiac procedures. The goal is to reduce patients’ dependence on devices on medication as well as invest in transformative research.
“Supporting education is my family’s credo.”
— Gitta Nagel
“Supporting education is my family’s credo,” said Gitta, whose husband Jack passed in 2018. “Establishing this fellowship fulfills this mission precisely by educating the best of the best in cardiac surgery and research to provide the finest care possible for people in need.”
The Cardiac Surgery Fellowship Program will be awarded to qualified general surgeons who want to undergo specialist training in advanced cardiac surgery. Each year, three of the most competitive candidates will be chosen as Nagel Program Fellows.
The founding chair of the Department of Cardiac Surgery and the Irina and George Schaeffer Distinguished Chair in Cardiac Surgery in honor of Alfredo Trento, MD, Dr. Joanna Chikwe, MD said, “In the U.S., most residents take on enormous debt to graduate medical school and complete residency. This gift opens Cedars-Sinai to the best and the brightest talent in cardiac surgery by removing financial barriers to spending additional time in research and training.”
According to Chikwe, for more than 10 years, surgeons at the Smidt Heart Institute have performed more adult heart transplants than any other medical center in the U.S. Right now, research by the fellows includes the impact of lung transplantation on patients with irreversible lung damage from Covid-19 and understanding the effects of Covid-19 on recipients of organ transplants.
“Our research has been presented nationally at the preeminent scientific meetings, and published in the most prestigious academic journals in medicine,” she said.
The Nagels, both Holocaust survivors, have a personal history with Cedars-Sinai. Gitta gave birth to all four of her children at the hospital, and her parents and Jack died there. She and Jack started going to the hospital for care when it was still called Cedars of Lebanon.
“Jack and I always felt that as grateful patients of care at Cedars-Sinai, our Orthodox Jewish community should always support our outstanding local hospital,” said Gitta.
For six decades, the Nagels, founding members of the Orthodox community in L.A., have dedicated themselves to a number of Jewish causes. Jack was a founding trustee of the Simon Wiesenthal Center as well as chairman of the West Coast Friends of Bar-Ilan University. The Nagels were founders of Yeshivat Yavneh, and they built the Nagel Family Campus at YULA Boys High School. In Israel, they built the Nagel Family Inpatient Pavilion of the children’s hospital at Shaarei Zedek Medical Center and supported Israel Bonds and The Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem.
“We are philanthropists, and our forte is Jewish education,” said Gitta. “It’s very important. We have to give every little girl and every little boy an opportunity to study Jewish education.”
Even though her husband is not with her anymore, Gitta is still committed to fulfilling their mission to contribute to the betterment of the world around her.
“My philosophy and that of my husband’s is we need Jewish education,” she said. “I was 65 years married. I still wear my wedding ring and I still don’t believe he died. That’s how I can keep on doing the things we did together.”
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