The Jones Family of Ottawa have doubled down on their multimillion-dollar donation to the Ottawa Hospital Foundation, pledging another $10 million toward the Campaign to Create Tomorrow and to expand kidney research and care. This brings the commitment from June and Russ Jones to $21 million since 2018, the Ottawa Hospital Foundation says. This funding will establish The Jones Family Kidney Research Centre at The Ottawa Hospital General Campus and will help build the new Civic Campus. The Hospital and the couple made the announcement Monday, supported by their family, doctors, and other researchers. “Standing here today, along with our whole family, we are honored to have the Kidney Research Centre renamed The Jones Family Research Centre. My hope is that one day, hopefully soon, no one will have to suffer with kidney disease, or the treatment will be significantly improved,” said June Jones. June Jones was diagnosed in 1990 with kidney disease after the birth of her two children. She was put on dialysis in 1998 and six months following that she received a call for a kidney transplant in November of 1998. That transplant lasted a few months shy of 15 years. In July of 2013, June’s transplant failed and she was back on dialysis. Even though June had 16 potential donors, her antibody levels being at 100 per cent made finding a match almost impossible. June says one scientist explained to her that her chance of receiving a second transplant was 1 in 30,000. “The only way for me to actually get a kidney is to do this research and with the cell therapy, and hopefully they’ll be able to change my cells so that I can accept a kidney,” said June Jones. “Right now, I’m 65 years old. If I receive a kidney by the time I’m 70, I’ll be laughing. I’ll be so happy. That’s the reason we’re doing it.” During her journey, she says she and her husband Russ discovered that kidney research is underfunded and that’s when they decided to do something about it through additional funding. “We pretty well knew that if we didn’t do the research, I would never receive a kidney. Now, it may not help me, but it will help other kidney patients down the road. There’s a lot of kidney patients that are at 100 per cent and may never receive a kidney, so this is the only way,” said June Jones. “Hopefully it’ll have a broader impact as well. People that are highly sensitized for other organs, hopefully some improvements here can help them as well,” Russ Jones said. “As June says, this may not help her specifically, but through research, hopefully it’ll help a lot of people. And so that’s kind of why we’re doing it and to involve our whole family.” Russ Jones says it’s multi-generational and they hope their kids and grandkids will continue to be very supportive of the Ottawa Hospital and research in Ottawa. “I think it’s good for researchers to be able to put a name to the disease that they’re focused on. When they show up every day and see the Jones Family sign, then they’ll know, oh, yeah, June Jones. Maybe I’ll work a little bit harder today. So hopefully that’s all part of it as well,” said Russ Jones. Cameron Love, CEO of The Ottawa Hospital, says the importance of the research programs is it’s what changes clinical delivery and outcomes of care. “If you look at the way this program was established literally 25 to 30 years ago, and the advancements that have been made, it’s because of research. And part of that drive on research is all the community support we’ve had, particularly from the Jones family. When you think now about what the next 10 years will involve and what science will drive, in terms of changing how we provide kidney care, that is really what this is about,” said Love. Monday’s pledge builds on the Jones’s $10 million donation in 2022 and $1 million donation in 2018. “We’ve done some prior investment, so this is an additional one on top of that. We’ve already started to see some of the benefit of the research we’ve been funding. We’re just excited about what else can happen,” said Russ Jones. “Thank you so much for the dedication and we look forward to the great discoveries that we know are just around the corner,” said June Jones.
