Dear Friends,
hildren are particularly vulnerable during difficult economic times, so we are pleased to report that the Foundation was able to make substantial progress during 2009.
We reached the two-thirds mark in our $500 million Breaking New Ground campaign for Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and the pediatric programs at the Stanford School of Medicine. The campaign received a wonderful boost from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, which announced plans to commit up to $100 million toward the expansion of Packard Children’s Hospital through a matching grant program. Also this year, 8.600 individuals, foundations and corporations made donations totaling $69.2 million to the Hospital and School of Medicine. The continuing generosity of all our donors enabled Packard Children’s to rank once again among the nation’s top children’s hospitals.
Complementing the work of Packard Children’s and the School of Medicine, we launched our new Foundation program area of building better systems of care for children with special health care needs. As growing numbers of children are living with chronic conditions, our goal is to help create a system for these children and their families that provides high-quality, family-centered, coordinated care within a medical home, funded by a unified, efficient and comprehensive payment system. Building on convenings of experts that we held in 2008, this year we commissioned reports, expanded our data, and began investing in state efforts to restructure California Children’s Services, the largest public funder of services for children with special needs.
In November, we took an exciting step toward raising the visibility of children’s health issues in California by expanding our flagship www.kidsdata.org. The site now offers data for all counties, cities and school districts in the state, and contains a wealth of information that is presented in a user-friendly format.
As always, we are grateful for your continuing support of our work. Your interest and generosity makes it possible for us to pursue our mission of helping all children in the communities we serve reach their maximum health potential.
Matt James, Chair
Board of Directors
David Alexander, MD
President and CEO