What Inspires Us to Cheers

The hospital experience can be stressful for patients and their families. Resources from the Children’s Fund allowed us to make the hospital experience more comfortable for families by:

• Refreshing patient playrooms with new playmats, bookshelves and play materials
• Supporting social workers who connect families in need to invaluable resources, such as transportation and lodging while their child is in the hospital
• Hiring Emergency Department waiting room attendants to provide support and activities for patients

CHOP prioritizes professional and continuing education for our dedicated healthcare leaders. The Children’s Fund enabled us to:

• Establish the new Breakthrough to Zero program to reduce harm and provide educational opportunities for CHOP’s Quality and Safety department leaders
• Bolster salary support in the Departments of Pediatrics and Surgery, paving the way for them to tackle challenges and advance standards of care
• Offer Diversity, Equity and Inclusion content and programming to all areas of the enterprise

CHOP is world-renowned for innovations in research and patient care. The Children’s Fund helps us close the gap between resources and breakthroughs, propelling discoveries in vital areas of pediatric medicine. With support from the Children’s Fund, we:

• Enabled our radiology department to develop innovative methods of detecting and evaluating lesions in newborns
• Provided six seed grants for new cell and gene therapy applications, including studies using gene therapy for bone repair and treating anemia
• Fostered a collaboration between the Departments of Anesthesiology and Critical Care and Biomedical and Health Informatics, resulting in 15 new abstracts and 10 publications

Our commitment to children’s health and wellbeing extends beyond the walls of our hospital and into our surrounding community, where many families are under-resourced and underserved. The Children’s Fund has allowed us to help meet the health needs of children in our community, through programs such as:

• Project BE-WEHL, a wellness program that helps families in underserved communities learn tactics to reduce stress and cope with trauma, including yoga, mindfulness and nutrition
• Partnership with the Healthy Kids Running Series, a youth running experience that shows kids how to make physical activity fun and how to incorporate it in their daily lives
• Dermatology e-consults to improve access to dermatologic care for low-income, underrepresented populations