Connecticut Children’s offers donors investment opportunities that welcome true philanthropic partners – those who seek to share in our efforts to ensure that all children in our region have access to state-of-the-art pediatric care while simultaneously fostering a cutting-edge research agenda that will help advance the practice of pediatrics for children everywhere. The following funds are available to designate support and any may be tailored to a specific aspect of the medical center’s mission.

GIFT OPPORTUNITIES
Resource Funds
Family Support Funds
Outreach Funds
Technology Funds
Discovery Funds
Children's Health Scholars

RESOURCE FUNDS
$5,000 per year
$50,000 endowed

These flexible funds may be established for use by any leader within the organization. They also may be designated in support of care and research for particular diseases or disorders. Beyond that, however, these flexible funds have no restrictions, allowing donors to designate the areas of greatest meaning to them, but allowing the people most responsible for progress in those areas to decide how best to make investments that will have the maximum impact.

FAMILY SUPPORT FUNDS
$5,000 per year
$50,000 endowed

An essential element of family-centered care, and of the Connecticut Children’s tradition, is being able to provide resources that relieve the everyday stresses of basic needs so that families can focus on the physical and emotional well being of the child in need of care. For our inpatient families, this is the everyday amenities they need while they stay in the Medical Center with their children or when they visit each day. From sundries to parking, there is a financial burden that builds over time as an increment to the necessities of life that are the norm for these families. Perhaps more importantly, many families experience medical and non-medical needs that they cannot meet for their children once they are home with them. There also may be financial pressures due to working parents who transition to full-time caregivers due to the challenges with which their children are faced. Family support funds, administered by our family support team, working in conjunction with clinical leadership, have a direct and immediate impact on our children and families.

OUTREACH FUNDS
$10,000 per year, for a minimum of 3 years
$100,000 endowed

Connecticut Children’s Medical Center has a strong tradition of defining innovations in healthcare for children and working hard to share those with the people in the community who can partner with us in improving the health of children. For example, the Injury Prevention Center has an extraordinary legacy of both legislative change and community-based programs that have significantly decreased child injuries in Connecticut. The Easy Breathing Program continues to reach out across the region to instill its proven asthma treatment plan to significantly lessen the need for acute care in the growing number of children diagnosed with this chronic condition. The Pain Management Program is an international leader in defining the standards for pain-limited/pain-free pediatric care. In addition, there are a host of programs from Sports Injury Prevention, to Obesity, to Transitional Medicine, that are learning from their predecessors and developing models of care that can be replicated throughout the State, country and world. All of these work outside the boundaries of reimbursed care. Though central to the health and well-being of our children, they are at the margin of funding for children’s health. Therefore, they, and all programs like them that continue to be developed at Connecticut Children’s, are dependent upon philanthropy from concept to implementation.

TECHNOLOGY FUNDS
$10,000 per year
$250,000 endowed

Anyone who has any engagement with medical care or medical research knows that technological innovation is a remarkable constant in both areas. Connecticut Children’s faces two key challenges. The first is to maintain state-of-the-art technology in clinical care so that our children have the access to the best that is available. If it is your child, you want be sure that the procedure is performed with the newest technology that provides the greatest benefit with the fewest short or long-term consequences. In today’s environment, only philanthropy can create the margin to make that possible. At the same time, our pediatric researchers can identify equipment that significantly amplifies the efficiency and efficacy of their research but, again, it is only possible through philanthropic investment. These funds will be dedicated to these purposes. As with the Resource Funds, they may be designated at the discretion of various leaders, from the President to Division Chiefs, and across the spectrum of programs at Connecticut Children’s.

DISCOVERY FUNDS
$25,000 per year, for a minimum of 3 years
$500,000 endowed

Vibrant research is a hallmark of any truly great children’s hospital. Not content to employ the findings of others, pediatric subspecialists at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center are seeking to define the standards of care, identify the best treatments and, where possible, to find the cures for children’s health problems. All of that is dependent, in large part, on philanthropy. Clinical and basic scientific research each has their relevant costs, and most of them are linked to recruiting the people needed to do the research. Clinical research, depending upon the area, may require a nurse who is dedicated to acquiring and tracking the patient and family information needed to fuel a research study, a child life specialist to provide recreational therapy and emotional support to the child and family throughout the course of the treatment/research, a nurse educator to train and guide the family through the treatment and maintenance process, a dedicated psychologist or social worker to help families work through related challenges and/or a database manager to collect all of the data and turn it into information to inform, guide and evaluate the research effort. In some cases, like our Center for Motion Analysis, there is a need for tests and procedures that may not be reimbursed, so the costs must be absorbed as part of the research project. Basic scientific research requires laboratory space, often needs specialized equipment and materials, is likely to require at least one full-time researcher in addition to the principal investigator and may need full or part-time data and laboratory support.

CHILDREN’S HEALTH SCHOLARS
$75,000 per year for a minimum of two years
$1,500,000 endowed

Part of the hope of a children’s hospital is the commitment of its physicians and healthcare professionals to developing new pathways of prevention and treatment, and potential cures, for childhood diseases and disorders. To recruit and retain the best pediatric subspecialists it is extremely important to have ways to recognize, and provide support for, their research and program development. Toward that end, we have created Children’s Health Scholars. These funds can be named according to the wishes of the donor and will be awarded to faculty for a term of two to three years, so that they are guaranteed a steady stream of funding over the lifespan of their projects. The Physician-in-Chief and Surgeon-in-Chief will decide the recipients based on the merits of their requests for funding and the fit with the interests of the donors who create the Clinical Scholar funds. It is the hope that they will be as broad and flexible as possible but, they may be restricted to an area of research if that has the most meaning for the donor. Most of all, these funds provide a personal link between the donors and the investigators poised to make significant contributions in clinical, basic scientific and translational research.