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  Doctor has the need for speedCardiologist links passion with profession to raise moneyBy Peggy Peck Editor's note: CNN.com has a business partnership with MedPageToday.com, which provides custom health content.  Dr. William Pinsky helps a young patient into a race car during a recent media event. HEALTH LIBRARYRELATEDYOUR E-MAIL ALERTSSPARTA, Kentucky (MedPage Today) -- Children's hospitals and race cars are the two passions of Dr. William Pinsky. On Sunday at the Kentucky Speedway he indulged in both simultaneously. A pediatric cardiologist by training, Pinsky, 57, has been working the racing circuit since 1990 when he launched Racing for Kids, a program that uses motor sports to bring attention to children's hospitals. Sunday's race, the Amber Alert Portal Indy 300, is a good example of how the program works, he said. His driver, Roger Yasukawa, came in a day early so that he could visit the children's hospital in nearby Cincinnati. "At the hospital, he talks to the kids, hands out hats, toy cars, and autographed items," Pinsky said. "We take a car over to the hospital and the kids who are ambulatory are taken outside to see the car, sit in it, get their pictures taken." Those hospital visits are preceded by a flood of press releases to local media, so "that we get the hospital and the kids on TV and in the local paper," he said. "Our goal is to make people think about the hospital." While "thinking" about the hospital may seem a small matter, Pinsky said, those thoughts have triggered Racing for Kids fund-raising efforts that have raised more than $3.5 million for children's hospitals in the 15 years since he started the program. Six years ago, Pinsky accepted a position as executive vice president and chief academic officer at the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans. Back in his Ochsner office early Monday morning, he appeared far removed from the world of "open-wheel" race cars, but ask what happened the day before when Yasukawa failed to make it back on the course after his last pit stop and he is back at the track. Behind the wheel"There was a lot of transmission trouble yesterday," Pinsky said. "We had ourselves well-positioned in 10th place after lap 172, but there was trouble with the gearbox and Roger got stuck in second gear. He never made it back to the track." Up in the grandstand, Pinsky communicated by headset with his driver. When he talks about trouble with the gearbox, he speaks with a certain authority -- he has driven in amateur races. He said that he had been interested in racing since he was boy, but it took him a while to fulfill that childhood fantasy. He attended medical school at Saint Louis University and then headed to Texas for training as a pediatric cardiologist at Baylor University and began a career in academic medicine -- caring for heart disease in children at a series of university-affiliated children's hospitals. At age 40, he completed a three-day course at Skip Barber Racing School, during which he learned to drive a Formula race car. "This is an open-wheel, open-cockpit car with a 2-liter engine. It is capable of doing up to 115 or 120 mph on a road course," he said. "I got it up to about 90 mph." He said that he enrolled in race school with the thought that "it would get the urge to race out of my blood. But instead, it got me more interested." After completing the course, he qualified for a racing license and started to run some amateur events in a series run by Barber. "What happens is that a guy like me calls and reserves a spot in the race and when we show up there is a car ready to drive," Pinsky said. Of course, all of this costs money -- an entry fee and "you have to pay for crash damage." Pinsky didn't say how much all this cost. "Some people join country clubs and play golf. That's expensive, I didn't do that, but I did race cars." He raced on the amateur circuit for about two years before he realized, "what I really wanted to do was to be involved in racing, but not necessarily as a driver." Simple idea yields big returnsHe decided to start a cause-related marketing program linked to racing. In 1988, he had the idea to start a marketing program for children's hospitals linked to racing; two years passed before he could link his idea to a driver and a race team. The first driver, Robbie Buhl, is now retired, but he remains the national spokesman for Racing for Kids. The drivers have a "Racing for Kids" logo on their helmets and racing suits and the logo is also emblazoned on the cars. In the past 15 years, Racing for Kids has visited more than 350 children's hospitals in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Japan. "We've met more than 15,000 hospitalized children," he said. In addition to the races and hospital visits, Racing for Kids participates in a number of fund-raising events each year. The biggest of these is at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach (California). "We've been involved in the celebrity-pro-am race there every year," Pinsky said. "Celebrities are brought in to race professional drivers with everyone driving the same Toyota car." Racing for Kids takes the celebrity drivers to visit Miller Children's Hospital in Long Beach and Children's Hospital of Orange County. "In recent years we've had Cameron Diaz, Ashley Judd, Craig T. Nelson, Dennis Franz, Patrick Dempsey -- the list goes on and on," Pinsky said. The event raises $100,000 to $200,000 each year. Since the early years of Racing for Kids, Pinsky's family, his wife Karen, his son and daughter and his three grandchildren have frequently traveled to races with him, which has made this avocation a family activity, too. But while he is happy with Racing for Kids, "and frankly amazed at our ability to raise funds," Pinsky said that his childhood fantasy is still not complete: "We want to win at Indianapolis." That's the Holy Grail of car racing. "A few years ago Robbie was in second place with 30 laps to go; he spun out when he pulled out to pass. So, we still need Indy." 
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