Ground has been broken. Stony Brook Children’s Hospital is rising. Fundraising for the project is moving close to its goal. For Long Island’s 400,000 children and their families, these milestones mean that their own hospital – a state-of-the-art pediatric facility where the next generation of children’s health specialists will receive training and conduct research – is well on its way.
Hundreds of businesses and private individuals have contributed nearly $20 million to the new Children’s Hospital. This total includes a $9 million matching challenge grant from an anonymous donor which was met recently when the Knapp Swezey Foundation pledged $2.7 million. About $5 million remains to be raised for the Children’s Hospital to reach its goals, according to Stony Brook University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., MD.
Other champions of Stony Brook Children’s include Sen. Kenneth P. LaValle (R-Port Jefferson) and Sen. John Flanagan (R-Northport), who helped secure more than $50 million for an expansion project that will help construct the medical and research translation (MART) building as well as the new Hospital Pavilion where the Children’s Hospital will reside. The combined $425 million project is the largest capital construction project within the State University of New York (SUNY) system in the past two decades.
Slated to open in 2016, the 100-bed Stony Brook Children’s will occupy two stories of the 10-story Hospital Pavilion. It will feature private family-centric rooms; separate pediatric inpatient areas for oncology, adolescent and intensive care; the general pediatrics unit; a pediatric procedure suite; patient playrooms and a family lounge.
“An essential mission of Stony Brook Children’s is to train the next generation of doctors and to push back the frontiers of translational medical research,” said Kenneth Kaushansky, MD, Senior Vice President for Health Sciences and Dean of the Stony Brook University School of Medicine. Additionally, the expanded facility is expected to help recruit and retain the best pediatric doctors in the country.
More than 8,000 infants, children and young adults are discharged each year from Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, which, in its existing facility, operates 106 pediatric beds and has more than 160 pediatric specialists in over 30 different specialties.
Stony Brook Children’s Hospital is the only dedicated children’s hospital located in the 100 miles between the Nassau/Queens border and Montauk, and the only children’s hospital on Long Island associated with a medical research institution.
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