The DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa Alabama received a $47,500 (joint grant with US Variety) to purchase a Giraffe Omnibed for their NICU. During the visit to Tuscaloosa earlier this year, we learned that our grant was the catalyst for a series of funding that came as a result of our gift.
During the visit we also learned that in August of 2004 a set of twins named Finn & Quinley were born at DCH Regional Medical Center. The babies were 15 weeks premature and only survived for one week. At the time of their birth, the hospital was even more underfunded than it is now and there were not enough Giraffe Omnibeds in the NICU. There is a chance that if the hospital was equipped with enough beds, the twins might have survived. The grieving parents set up The Finn & Quinley Memorial Foundation to raise funds for the hospital so that other families would not have to endure the pain of losing a child because of lack of equipment.
After several years of operating the Foundation on their own, the family realized that if they partnered with the hospital they could do much more so, in 2012, the Finn & Quinley Memorial Foundation merged with The DCH Foundation to become the Finn & Quinley Infant & Children’s Fund.
Thanks to the notoriety the NICU gained from the Will Rogers Institute grant, along with the funding that came soon after our grant, the hospital budgeting committee was so moved by the overwhelming need of the NICU that they decided to allocate all proceeds from the DCH Foundation’s annual Ball to the Finn & Quinley Children & Infants Fund. We just learned today that those funds allowed for the purchase of seven additional Omnibeds!
The work of the Neonatal Pulmonary Grant program is making an extraordinary difference in the lives of families and their brave little fighters all over the country.
