Hannenbergs Create Fund to Provide Current and Future Support for FAER

Dr. Alexander Hannenberg and
his wife, Dr. Carol Hannenberg

Now retired after nearly 40 years as a community hospital anesthesiologist, Dr. Alexander Hannenberg served on the FAER board for nine years prior to his role as president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. He always thought of himself as a consumer of FAER’s work product in the sense that he used the tools, devices, drugs, and techniques that FAER-funded researchers developed, and he hired the anesthesiologists that FAER-funded anesthesiologists trained.

To “return the favor” because his practice was the beneficiary of FAER’s work, he and his wife, Dr. Carol Hannenberg, have created a donor-advised fund to support FAER and their other charitable interests. They make current distributions from it, and their estate documents direct that their support will continue after their lifetimes. 

“Several years ago, Carol and I established a fund to facilitate our charitable giving and to create a source of philanthropy for our heirs,” Dr. Hannenberg says. “We have been longtime donors to FAER and passionate believers in the idea that FAER’s work embodies professionalism in our specialty and gives us the people who advance our knowledge and our practices.”

Dr. Hannenberg encourages others to consider providing for the future of FAER through current and planned gifts. “If you don’t want the specialty to stagnate, FAER is essential,” he concludes. “When you think about advancing the practice, it can have lots of meanings. But the fact that people are, for example, using ultrasound to accurately and safely deliver regional anesthesia and didn’t do that twenty years ago, that’s advancing the practice. And that comes back to education and research.”

Reinforcing his belief in the vital importance of FAER’s emphasis on research was a lecture he attended in 2004 with then FAER Board Chair Myer “Mike” Rosenthal where a key message was “the research bug is gotten early.” They discussed that FAER may be intervening too late because the organization did not target medical students. The following summer, the first cohort of what is now the Medical Student Anesthesia Research Fellowship (MSARF) was established, with Dr. Hannenberg chairing the committee. 

“When I think of what I have accomplished in my career, the student fellowship is high on the list,” he says. In its current version, the summer fellowship provides medical students with an eight-week research experience within an academic anesthesiology department. During the fellowship, students participate in research, training, and clinical anesthesia activities. In addition, medical student summer fellows have the opportunity to make a scientific presentation at the ASA's ANESTHESIOLOGY® annual meeting. “FAER has been incredibly nimble and focused, especially with the medical student research fellowship.”