Oregonians love our state for its coastline, mountains, farmland, vineyards and deserts. Wherever you live in Oregon, Doernbecher Children’s Hospital serves your community with comprehensive expertise in children’s health.
Doernbecher is one-of-a-kind in Oregon, offering highly specialized care unavailable anywhere else in our region. It’s the kind of resource that makes a life-or-death difference — but you might not be aware of its importance until you need it, or until a friend or neighbor does. So you might not know that the families who rely on Doernbecher also rely on you. That’s because none of this is possible without philanthropy.
Compared to other parts of the country, the Pacific Northwest has a relatively small population, spread over a wide area. That means that some families travel hundreds of miles to Doernbecher for specialized care that is unavailable in their hometowns. About 40 percent of Doernbecher patients come from outside Portland — some from as far away as Idaho and Alaska.
Our region’s lower population density also means that the patient volume for Oregon hospitals isn’t enough to fully pay for such a comprehensive range of specialized care, or to make it available around the clock.
Here are just a few examples of what Doernbecher donors help make possible:
- Doernbecher is home to the most comprehensive fetal therapy program between San Francisco and Seattle, able to diagnose and treat more than 20 types of birth defects and other pregnancy complications before a child is born.
- Doernbecher’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit takes care of hundreds of babies each year, ensuring that the most seriously ill newborn patients receive the most advanced neonatal care in the region.
- Doernbecher has an emergency department just for kids. The hospital is a Level I trauma center, staffed and equipped to provide total care for even the most complex cases.
- Level I site for children’s surgery, with Oregon’s only pediatric operating rooms dedicated exclusively to kids.
- PANDA (Pediatric and Neonatal Doernbecher Transport) makes more than 800 trips around the state every year, bringing critically ill and injured children to the hospital’s NICU or PICU.
- Doernbecher is the state’s only provider of bone marrow transplants in children.
- The hospital is involved in more than 80 active clinical trials and databases — more than all other Oregon hospitals combined.
- Doernbecher is home to the state’s only dedicated center for the treatment of cystic fibrosis.
- The Craniofacial Medicine and Cleft Palate Program handles the largest volume of patients in the state.
Only philanthropy makes this kind of expert care possible — so that families in our region have somewhere to turn, no matter what diagnosis they are facing, no matter when illness or injury strikes.
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