Accomplishments

The UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Foundation has made many contributions to support and enhance quality health care for children in northeast Ohio. Over the years, the UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Foundation has:

• Founded Voices for Ohio's Children in 1995, along with University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital’s Office of Child Advocacy.
• The mission of Voices for Ohio’s Children was to advocate for children beyond the walls of UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital and beyond just the health needs of children. This program was staffed by Heidi Gartland, then Director of Child Advocacy and Lolita McDavid, MD the Medical Director of Child Advocacy & Protection.
• Pledged a $5 million gift for a new neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), which opened in April 2009.
• Matched $500,000 for each $1 million donor for the support of a Pediatric Endowed Chairs. We have awarded 10 matching grants to UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, totaling $5 million. This challenge encouraged new donors and an additional $10 million was given to UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital.
• Allocated $1 million annually since 2005 to the Child Life Program, which is committed to providing individualized intervention to meet the emotional and developmental needs of pediatric patients and their families during health care experiences.
• Allocated an average of $200,000 annually since 2005 to Child Advocacy, which provides essential governmental and political advocacy to protect the health care needs of children, as well as Rainbow Medicaid funding.
• Allocated an average of $350,000 annually for the past four years to surgical development. Funding used to continue efforts to provide start-up funds for a variety of pediatric surgical subspecialty research initiatives.
• Allocated $1.4 million to the Heart Center, which supports strategic investments in our maternal-fetal care program and enables women with high-risk pregnancies and/or a prenatal diagnosis of a fetal abnormality to deliver their babies at University Hospitals MacDonald Women’s Hospital.
• Allocated $700,000 to subspecialty fellowships. The purpose is to fund fellowships in subspecialties so that individuals are trained in laboratory techniques, basic science, bench and clinical research.
• Initiated and established the Circle of Friends Program at UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital. Since the program started in 2007, it has raised over $1 million.
• Hosted two major fundraisers, Ride the Rainbow and Rainbow Golf Classic, which will bring in an estimate of $1 million for 2012 that help fund Child Life, child health policy, pediatric surgical subspecialties and endowed chairs.
• Overall, donated over $57 million to UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital from 2000 to 2010.