The Indianapolis-based Riley Children’s Foundation has announced a $2.5 million matching gift from the Ricks Family Foundation in support of a research collaborative focused on children’s nutrition.

The gift from the foundation of Eli Lilly and Company CEO David A. Ricks will provide seed funding for the Heartland Children’s Nutrition Collaborative, a new joint research initiative between Purdue and Indiana university. The collaborative will partner with the Purdue University College of Agriculture Department of Food Science and the IU School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics to discover how early-life food intake can shape and influence both short-term and long-term health. The Purdue College of Agriculture and IU School of Medicine are investing $1.25 million each in the collaborative to support recruitment of faculty with expertise related to children’s nutrition. Should the Ricks Foundation match be fully maximized, the program will have $10 million in startup funding.

“This initiative is particularly timely and essential given an alarming rise in pediatric conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and other nutrition-related illnesses,” said Carmella Evans-Molina, co-leader of the collaborative and professor of pediatrics and director of the Indiana Diabetes Research Center at IU School of Medicine. “Thanks to the generosity of the Ricks Family Foundation, we have the opportunity to collaborate together in powerful new ways to reverse these trends, and to make Indiana a leader in children’s health.”

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