Building a Healthier System

When Zenia Frendt’s 80- year-old grandmother, June Morris, got pneumonia, Frendt learned in the hospital that the illness was affecting  her grandmother’s heart. Confronting the news was difficult, of course, but what made it more difficult was what the family considered poor quality of care.

“It felt like they just looked at her and said, ‘old lady, 80s, heart problems. She’s gone—that’s the breaks. Here’s the normal meds that everyone takes; have a nice day,’” Frendt says.

But the family wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Neither was June, who had gotten ill while hiking in Iceland. The care she received at that other hospital, says Frendt, simply wasn’t good enough—not for her grandmother, not for anyone.

With urging from family and friends, they sought a second opinion from Dr. James Fang, chief of cardiology at University of Utah Health. His approach was different.

“He listened,” says Frendt, who was Morris’s primary caregiver.

He suggested medication based on emerging research. And his work, says Frendt, gave her grandmother four more years.

“Rather than see her great-grandkids reach nine, she saw them reach 13. That’s a big difference,” she says. “That was four more Christmases. Four more years with family. Four more years to get to know her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”

When Morris died on July 23, 2021, it wasn’t from heart complications at all, but from other health issues that had arisen with age.

It made sense that June—who had founded Morris Air, which sold to Southwest in 1993—and her husband, Mitchell, would want to support Fang through philanthropy. Over time, they connected with U of U Health to fund his research, as well as the research of Dr. Zachary McCormick in orthopedics. Eventually they provided scholarships for med students in cardiology and orthopedics, hoping to make a difference in health care.

“These are people who show that they care about you as a person. They’re going to listen and not just brush you off—and never even look you in the eye.” 

“These are people who show that they care about you as a person. They’re going to listen and not just brush you off—and never even look you in the eye.”

Today, Frendt carries her grandparents’ legacy forward as director of the family’s foundation, The Morris Foundation. She continues to support Fang, McCormick, and promising doctors like them at U of U Health, but after her experience with her grandmother—and later, more health care roadblocks when her daughter was diagnosed with a rare cancer of the eye—her mission has grown larger: she wants to fix a broken system.

Frendt is aware that she comes from a family financially able to seek multiple medical opinions thanks to the hard work and investments of her grandparents. She’s aware that the Morrises are well-educated and know that one size does not fit all in medicine. Fortunately for her, that means she’s more readily able to seek alternate opinions that other families may be unaware are available. It also means she’s in a position to support the research of doctors and the future of health care more broadly—more strategically—because for Frendt, quality of care and emerging research shouldn’t only be available to families like hers.

“The more I think about my story,” says Frendt, “the more frustrated I get with how broken the system is nationally and how hard it is for people to find the right kind of care for their families.”

It’s impossible, of course, for one foundation to fix a national system; but Frendt knows that funding a scholarship for a medical student who shares her passion can make a difference, that funding the research of doctors like Fang makes a difference, and that all those gifts add up to better health care for everyone.

“Not every doctor knows about the latest research out there, or their hubris or fear of being sued may prevent them from trying new things,” says Frendt. “We want to support the people who are willing to listen to families, to dig into the latest research, and to make a difference even for one family or one patient.”

For Frendt, philanthropy is a long game: the more doctors out there who are willing to treat patients as individuals and not just cases—and feel supported in that mission—the healthier our health care system can become.