The Boreal Waters Community Foundation is the charitable-giving body of the David Scaife family, with a focus on promoting excellence across three main areas: health, human services, and education. Their initiatives are primarily targeted toward bettering the community in southwestern Pennsylvania, with a strong focus on Pittsburgh where the Foundation is headquartered.
The DSF Charitable Foundation's Health Grant program primarily funds research on Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and other neurodegenerative conditions, seeking to advance the study and treatment by encouraging collaboration between researchers and clinicians. It has significantly funded the Pittsburgh Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases for this purpose. The program also supports efforts in the emerging field of clinical proteomics to achieve early detection of cancers through blood tests, aiming to substantially reduce cancer rates by identifying protein signatures characteristic of certain cancer types. Further, the Foundation awards grants to enhance education and departmental growth at institutions like Carnegie Mellon University, focusing on biomedical engineering and computational biology, disciplines pivotal to the future of biomedicine. In the realm of clinical care, it has contributed to the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative to promote a healthcare system that delivers efficient, error-free care, demonstrating a commitment to improving healthcare outcomes through quality-engineering approaches and community collaboration.