The gift, provided through Ballerini’s Feel Your Way Through Charitable Fund, will benefit the hospital’s efforts to keep the children of Tennessee and beyond safe.

Evidence showed that deficiency in musical rhythm perception is a “modest but consistent risk factor for developmental speech, language and reading disorders.”

There has been a growing mental health crisis among children and adolescents in Tennessee, where the suicide death rate among youth (ages 5-17) is 13.6% higher than the national average.

The new residency program reflects the commitment to invest in VWCH, now a teaching hospital, and to advance health care in the surrounding community.

The Vanderbilt Vision Research Center was founded in 1989 and secured the National Eye Institute core grant that still supports it; the grant will provide approximately $3.3 million over the current five-year funding period.

Overall, there was a 14% reduction in skin cancer risk. When nicotinamide was taken after a first skin cancer, the risk reduction rose to 54%.

Originally developed in the 1950s but never approved for clinical use, these substances are over 20 times more potent than fentanyl and hundreds to thousands of times more potent than morphine.