Alumni Association e-Newsletter, Volume 1, January 2013

Welcome Alumni

Dear Fellow St. Christopher's Alum,

The St. Christopher's Hospital for Children Alumni Association stands to preserve the heritage and spirit of our hospital, and offers ongoing support for its educational and community mission.

I'm proud to serve as President of the Alumni Association, and I welcome you to our first Alumni E-Newsletter. I hope that our first issue conveys the sense of enthusiasm that is running through the hospital these days.

Just about everyone at St. Christopher's has expressed great excitement at the announcement that the hospital is planning a $110 million dollar expansion of the main campus. Philadelphia's Mayor Michael Nutter and Trevor Fetter, president and chief executive officer of Tenet Healthcare, joined us on campus to announce the plans. Highlights of the expansion include blueprints for a Critical Care Tower and a dedicated home for the Center for the Urban Child.

The Critical Care Tower will be 135,000 square feet and four floors; it will include 50 new critical care beds and 60 Level IIIC neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) beds. The tower will also enable St. Christopher's to offer larger, private critical care rooms complete with leading edge technology and space to comfortably accommodate families. The Center for the Urban Child is a community-focused initiative that will help children in Philadelphia break the cycles of food insecurity, violence and childhood illness.

Our latest pediatric residency class and fellowship programs are also source of pride, as St. Christopher's continues to attract top graduates from outstanding educational institutions. Our latest Pediatric Residency Class includes 28 exceptional people from 21 different medical schools. Our fellowship programs are robust with trainees in anesthesiology, critical care medicine, emergency medicine, endocrinology, neonatal-perinatal medicine, child neurology, radiology, pulmonology, pediatric surgery, surgical research, and pediatric dentistry.

Please feel free to pass along this edition of the St. Christopher's Alumni Association E-Newsletter to other alumni and colleagues. Your efforts will help our association build a complete list of alumni so that we may reach everyone interested in the great people and activities of St. Christopher's. Just click the "forward to alum" button at the top of the e-mail you received. Additionally, if you wish to support the work of the association, so that we may continue our educational and community initiatives at the hospital, please let me, Dr. Doug Thompson, or any member of our Alumni Association Board know. I can be reached at AlumniAssociation@tenethealth.com or by phone, (215) 427-5051.

Sincerely,

Donald P. Goldsmith, MD
President, St. Christopher's Hospital for Children Alumni Association
Director, Section of Rheumatology
St. Christopher's Hospital for Children