Banner Children’s:
Shaping a New Era of Pediatric Care
From comprehensive health and routine wellness to highly specialized care for chronic and rare conditions, Banner Children’s has been on the cutting edge of pediatric care since 2009. Today, family-centered medical care is available across the state at our dedicated pediatric facilities: Banner Children’s at Desert in Mesa, Banner Children’s at Thunderbird in Glendale, and Diamond Children’s Medical Center in Tucson. Across our rich spectrum of pediatric services, Banner’s caring, kid-connected professionals are helping to make childhood well and wonderful.
MAKING CARE ACCESSIBLE AND EQUITABLE FOR ALL CHILDREN
Many aspects of Arizona’s future depend on our ability to raise healthy, thriving children today. This begins by making quality health care resources available to expecting families, babies, and growing children. Making care accessible and equitable for all children, regardless of their ability to pay, is a vital part of the Banner Children’s purpose. As medical advances continue to help children facing serious or chronic illness to live longer lives, we have an extraordinary opportunity to care for the children in our communities and improve their quality of life. By investing in key patient care programs, specialty care, cancer research, and all of the necessary supportive services that help children thrive in the face of medical challenges, we can enhance the health and well-being of the next generation.
Investment opportunities are detailed on the following pages. Commemorative naming is available to recognize significant gifts.
CARE
Banner Children’s Heart Center
Initiative Goal: $3,000,000
Center for Fetal Surgery
Initiative Goal: $5,000,000
Banner Children’s Congenital Heart Program offers comprehensive, family-centered care to children and adults born with congenital heart defects. Our highly skilled team provides all aspects of care including complex congenital heart surgery, interventional catheter procedures, invasive electrophysiology procedures, advanced cardiac imaging (Cardiac CT, Cardiac MRI, fetal echocardiography, transesophageal echocardiography) and comprehensive cardiopulmonary stress testing. Our team provides cardiology support to all Banner medical centers and has extensive outpatient clinical practices throughout central and northern Arizona. Pediatric Cardiology is a highly technical field requiring specialized equipment to deliver high-quality care. Funding will help expand the physical clinical spaces to improve access to care, acquire new necessary equipment (i.e., ECHO machines, ECG machines) and support additional staffing to expand the practice.
In early 2024, Banner – University Medicine’s Fetal Care Center in Tucson performed the state’s first in-utero spina bifida repair surgery on a fetus in the 25th week of pregnancy. This intricate level of care is only available at Banner’s Fetal Care Center, an interdisciplinary team combining the expertise of Banner – University Medical Center Tucson and Banner Children’s at Diamond Children’s. After surgery, the unborn baby continues to develop in the mother’s womb, receiving highly specialized care until the time of delivery.
The center is the first full-service fetal care center in the Southwest that provides the full range of fetal surgery in a compassionate, highly specialized, and timely fashion for unborn babies. The program also offers parents pre-, peri-, and post-natal management strategies. The fetal surgery multidisciplinary team includes a pediatric fetal surgeon, maternalfetal medicine specialist, neonatologist, fetal nurse practitioner, geneticist, social worker, and specific pediatric/fetal subspecialists in neurosurgery, neurology, nephrology, cardiology, radiology, anesthesiology, and more.
Philanthropic support allows Banner to recruit and retain top talent in the areas of maternal fetal medicine, fetal radiology, and pediatric surgery. It also supports the acquisition of the most advanced surgical equipment and technology, facility upgrades, and vital supportive services such as genetics counseling for families, psychological and emotional support, social worker services, and palliative care.
Banner Children’s Center for Surgical Excellence
Initiative Goal: $5,000,000
CARE TALENT
Subspecialty
Physician Services
Initiative Goal: $10,000,000
Banner Children’s pediatric surgery team is committed to providing the most advanced care for children with complex surgical needs. Utilizing a multidisciplinary team approach, our doctors, surgeons, therapists, nurses, and other specialists work together to provide leading-edge care tailored to the needs of each patient. Our highly trained surgeons perform procedures, including laparoscopic and thoracoscopic surgery as well as open surgery to the extremities, head, neck, chest, abdomen, and pelvis. Offering this kind of family-centered, coordinated care within one organization helps patients and families make important treatment decisions in a timely manner. Philanthropic support will accelerate discovery and innovation, train new surgeons, support quality outcomes reporting, and provide ongoing staffing support to ensure that every child who undergoes surgery with Banner Children’s has the best possible outcomes.
Caring for more Arizona children than any other health care provider brings with it a responsibility to be the best. This requires subspecialty physicians that are often difficult to recruit due to a national shortage of trained experts and high demand for their unique skills. These positions include pediatric general surgeons, neurologists, anesthesiologists, urologists, ENTs, and infectious disease specialists. Philanthropic support for newly recruited physicians for the first few years of practice allows Banner to recruit and retain the highest-caliber talent to the Banner Children’s team.
Endowed leadership positions are a hallmark of institutions that put an emphasis on the highest levels of medical care, education, and research and are one of the most prestigious honors bestowed on a physician. Endowments help to attract and retain the most talented physician and research leaders and enhance the reputation of the organization, which then helps to attract other renowned clinicians and staff. Leadership endowments also provide an important source of sustainable funding for physician leaders to advance their specialties. Philanthropic support will endow leadership positions in pediatric orthopedics, cardiology, neurology, and gastroenterology.
Operational Support for Supportive Services
Initiative Goal: $5,000,000
Because hospitals can be scary places for children, Banner Children’s offers many special programs and necessary supportive care that help children feel brave, empowered, and in control of their journey. These services are not reimbursable by insurance, making philanthropic gifts from generous donors vital to support staff salaries and modest program expenses:
• Child Life Specialists are the heart of our pediatric medical centers. As psychosocial health care professionals, Child Life Specialists are trained in child development, family systems, and evidence-based supportive interventions, making them indispensable members of the pediatric health care team. These dedicated professionals help children cope with their medical experiences, reduce child and family stress, and support emotional well-being through developmentally appropriate play, education, and therapeutic interventions.
• Banner Children’s on-site Hospital Schools are places where retired teachers and trained volunteers work with hospitalized children to ensure they stay on track with their studies and don’t fall behind their peers because of missed school—the top concern children express when asked what worries them most about their illness. Hospital School teachers work with students one on one, assist with homework and test preparation, liaise with their home school and teacher, and even help teen patients study for college entrance exams.
• The Children At Risk Evaluation (CARE) program protects children by being a sentinel for identifying abuse and neglect in children who present for medical care, reporting suspected abuse to authorities, and supporting families by with referrals to community services. With the primary goal of preventing abuse before it happens, the CARE team works diligently to strengthen families to reduce known risk factors associated with inflicted trauma and provide vital education and outreach to medical providers, nonprofits, law enforcement, and other health systems.
• Banner Children’s Community Clinics and the Healthmobile deliver free primary care to uninsured children across the Valley in their neighborhoods, ensuring they receive the care they need to stay healthy, perform well in school, and grow into healthy adults.
• Music, art, and pet therapy are additional supports that brighten the day of hospitalized children. Recreation spaces allow children to relax away from their hospital rooms, host visiting performers and birthday celebrations, and give children the chance to engage in movement and self-expression to speed healing and reduce trauma.
• Our Developmental Pediatrics Clinic provides comprehensive assessments of children who present with developmental delays (cognitive, social-emotional, motor, speech and language), disruptive behaviors, and challenges with attention and learning. The Clinic also offers comprehensive, supportive pediatric health care to children with developmental behavioral disabilities, learning disabilities, neurodevelopmental disorders, autism spectrum disorders and Down Syndrome. Demand for this specialized level of care has been so high, patients are currently waiting one year for an appointment. Further philanthropic investment will allow the program to double in size and reach.
TALENT
INNOVATION & RESEARCH
Advanced Pediatric Cancer Center
Initiative Goal: $5,000,000
Banner Children’s Greatest Needs
Banner Children’s comprehensive oncology care team is committed to family-centered care, with treatment options including surgery, chemotherapy, and bone marrow transplant. Access to clinical trials is a critical component of our pediatric oncology program. Operational investments at our Children’s Blood & Cancer Centers at all three children’s hospitals will support research nurses and expenses associated with full participation in the Children’s Oncology Group, bringing the latest in new clinical treatments to children in need of cancer care. Additionally, philanthropic support will help Banner to recruit indemand subspecialists including pediatric interventional radiologists, geneticists, and palliative care specialists.
Unrestricted gifts of every size are vital in supporting a range of needs across Banner Children’s services. These flexible funds power world-class care, innovation, and discovery across our three Banner Children’s medical centers in Arizona. Gifts to this fund allow us to provide compassionate, child-centered care, pursue new opportunities, advance pediatric medicine, find new innovative treatments and cures, and respond to public health crises. Your gift to this unrestricted fund will help advance world-class pediatric care throughout Arizona and the southwest well into the future, leaving an enduring legacy of caring for our communities.
At the heart of life is health. And at the heart of health is Banner.
With your support, we can meet the challenges of caring for children head on and bring world-class care and services to Arizona. Investments needed to catapult Banner’s programs to national esteem total $33 million. Together, we can make a profound difference in the health and lives of our youngest patients and help ensure that childhood is well and wonderful.