Former Congressman Patrick Kennedy told NBC 10 that he's working as hard as ever for mental health awareness, an issue that he believes will help millions of victims, and along the way, may boost the state he used to call home.
Kennedy spoke Thursday to a full auditorium at the University of Rhode Island about the school's new graduate department of neuroscience.
It's a field that Kennedy says can ultimately help everyone from Alzheimer's disease patients, to war veterans returning home with head injuries. Kennedy said it's also a field that, until now, has been splintered into competing disciplines that he'd like to bring together.
"Let's invest in the thing that's going to really make huge returns for all of us in our lives, and that's taking care of the people we love," Kennedy said.
Kennedy continues to push his mental health awareness campaign, One Mind for Research, an initiative seeking to improve funding for unified research efforts in brain science.
One piece is promoting URI's neuroscience program. URI President David Dooley said the school has every reason to be a leader in Kennedy's endeavor.
"Basic science is going to be the interstate highway for neuroscience. It's what's going to find the cures ultimately or will lead to the cures for all of the various disorders that we are struggling with right now. And URI is very strong in basic neuroscience," Dooley said.
Kennedy said he thinks Rhode Island can be a center of excellence in the field of neuroscience.
"We have got a really strong university structure in this state and that makes us strong because we have a lot of people who are smart and thinking about things in new and innovative ways and the key is, how do we monetize that, how do we bring jobs back, because we have really smart people here," he said.
"There's no question that the kind of research that URI and Brown and other institutions do in these areas of neuroscience, and biomedical research more broadly, can drive enormous economic change in the state," Dooley said
Dooley and Kennedy hope the neuroscience initiative is the ticket for development in Providence, along with the hospitals and Brown's medical school in the so-called Knowledge District.
URI will hold its actual launch of the new neuroscience department at a ceremony Dec. 6.
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