Dr. AUDREY EVANS,
Co-Founder of Ronald McDonald Houses

Dr. AUDREY EVANS, the co-founder (with Jimmy) of the Ronald McDonald Houses made us laugh with her no-nonsense approach to soliciting help from the Philadelphia Eagles…she didn’t know who they were!

BIO: Audrey Elizabeth Evans (born 1925) is a pediatric oncologist, known for developing the Evans Staging System for Neuroblastoma. She is also one of the co-founders of the original Ronald McDonald House in Philadelphia as well as a founding member of the National Wilms Tumor Study.

Born in York, England, Audrey Evans trained at the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh in the early 1950s. She was the only female student in the medical school. She came to the United States in 1953 as a Fulbright Fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital where, in 1957, she conducted early work on Autologous bone marrow transplantation. Dr. Evans was appointed head of the hematology-oncology unit at the University of Chicago Clinics in 1964, and in 1968 assumed management of the children’s cancer center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She served as chair of the Division of Oncology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia from 1969 to 1989 and was appointed a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1972. She married Dr. Giulio D’Angio, professor of radiation oncology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Evans and Dr. D’Angio were the first to describe the phenomenon of spontaneous regression of widely disseminated neuroblastoma that they later dubbed “4S disease”.

Evans also helped create the original Ronald McDonald House in Philadelphia in 1974. The facility gives families of young cancer patients a place to stay while their critically ill children receive treatment. She subsequently founded the Ronald McDonald Camp in 1987 for children suffering from painful illnesses and treatments. The foundation focuses on providing different resources, housing, and overall care to the children and families in need. Evans instituted and chaired the early meetings for Advances in Neuroblastoma Research, which began on May 30, 1975, as a series of symposia held at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The conference is designed to promote the exchange of information among investigators studying Neuroblastoma biology, diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy. Dr. Evans’ advances have reduced the number of neuroblastoma fatalities by about fifty percent.