278400
in-person visits
10000+
surgeries
47438
emergency room visits
1323
research papers
We believe in children and in families
At the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation, our mission is to inspire our community to invest in excellence in child health, research and family-centred care. We’re honoured to work with a dedicated team of caring professionals at our hospital, and we’re even prouder to be part of a community that shares our vision for a healthier future for children.
Focused on family-centred care
The Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation inspires our community to invest in excellence in child health, research, and family-centred care. Family-centred care is a philosophy that recognizes the important role families play in the physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being of their children. Your support helps us deliver the best family-centred care possible, right in our own community.
As the official fundraising body for the Alberta Children’s Hospital, all money raised by the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation is re-invested in the hospital and child health needs in this region. Through the generosity of our donors, we provide funding for family-centred child health programs, specialized life-saving equipment and advanced paediatric research and education at the Alberta Children’s Hospital.
Lenroy is here today because of the life-saving care of the paediatric Critical Care Transport program and specialists at the Alberta Children’s Hospital. Thanks to generous community support, the Transport team made up of dedicated, highly skilled experts can travel to smaller hospitals by ground ambulance, plane or helicopter to stabilize seriously ill children before bringing them to the Alberta Children’s Hospital for critical care. When the usual jovial three-year-old became complaining of a tummy ache, was throwing up, became limp and then started having seizures, the Transport team rushed him to the Alberta Children’s Hospital by fixed-wing airplane where he received life-saving surgery for a tumour creating dangerous pressure in his brain. His family are grateful to the specialists on the transport team and the Alberta Children’s Hospital who all worked together to save their little boy’s life.
Did you know?
Thanks to community support, the Alberta Children’s Hospital has become a world leader in the field of high-tech human patient simulation. Within Canada’s first and largest hospital-based paediatric simulation lab, using life-like mannequins ranging in size from premature baby to adult, our hospital’s experts have helped thousands of doctors, nurses, surgeons and residents sharpen their skills in treating children who require resuscitation, heart-lung bypass, critical care while in transport, surgical intervention and much more. The KidSIM team also offers training for families so they can feel confident managing the needs of children with chronic or complex conditions at home.
Simulation training is also currently supporting the COVID-19 response across all areas of the hospital by standardizing processes, reducing risk of cross contamination, optimizing systems, and improving patient care.
The Alberta Children’s Hospital is also the first in Canada to provide a community-funded program called “Hospital at Home”. Through this service, children receive select chemotherapies, medications, and procedures in the comfort of their own homes. These specialized house calls mean children spend fewer nights in hospital, reducing stress for the entire family and improving quality of life for children with serious blood disorders and cancer.
Navee is back to excelling in school and track and field thanks to a collaboration of experts – including neurologists, rheumatologists and occupational therapists – who worked together to figure out that her sudden inability to walk, talk or function properly was the result of anti-NMDA autoimmune encephalitis, a type of brain inflammation that occurs when the immune system suddenly attacks healthy brain cells.
Changing lives everyday
Donations are invested in the Alberta Children’s Hospital’s highest priority needs. Thanks to community investments, the hospital is becoming a leader in the fields of childhood cancer, life- saving care, and brain health. Generous community support is helping the Alberta Children’s Hospital achieve important advancements for sick and injured kids in our community, including most recently:
- Crucial world-leading research to understand the impact of COVID-19 on children.
- A new Centre for Child & Adolescent Mental Health that will provide a model of care unique in Canada. It will also be the most research-intensive community-based mental health facility for youth in the country, enabling studies and discoveries never before possible in our community.
- The world’s first transcranial magnetic stimulation clinic for teens is due to open at the new Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. Innovative research is already well underway into a new non-invasive therapy to help adolescents with treatment-resistant depression and other brain-related disorders.
- Canada’s first “Hospital at Home” service for children with cancer and life-threatening blood and immune disorders
Mental health matters
Did you know that 70% of mental health issues start in childhood?
To address the growing demand for mental health services at the hospital and across the city, our community is funding construction of the first Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health in Calgary. When it opens, it will provide three crucial new programs and be one of the most robust research-intensive community-based mental health care facilities for young people in Canada. Learn more at www.buildthemup.ca
The Edwards Family Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Alberta Children’s Hospital cares for some of the province’s sickest and smallest babies. Little Nora was one of them. She was born with a diaphragmatic hernia – hole in her diaphragm – that caused her intestines and stomach to be pushed up from her belly and into her chest cavity, impeding the growth of her lungs and impacting her ability to breathe on her own. At just two days old, Nora was transferred to the Edwards Family NICU for a life-saving surgery to repair her diaphragm and put her organs back in place. She remained intubated during her operation and for the next two weeks in the NICU. Following a total six-week stay, her parents happily took her home. Her parents are grateful for the life-saving care their little girl received at the Alberta Children’s Hospital.
Help build a bright future for kids and families
We’ve made incredible strides. But we need your help.
About Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation
The Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation supports care for children from newborn to age 17 from across Alberta, southeastern British Columbia and southwestern Saskatchewan, as multi-disciplinary teams work together to promote healing through family-centred care.
The hospital was opened in Calgary, Alberta, in September 2006, becoming the first free-standing paediatric facility to be built in Canada in more than 20 years.
Family-centred care is a philosophy celebrated by the Alberta Children’s Hospital that recognizes the important role families play in the physical, psychological and spiritual well-being of their children. This model of care embraces family members as key partners in a child’s healing team.
This philosophy is most evident in the actual design of the building. The hospital was imagined by the people who use the building the most — kids, families, physicians and staff. Our colourful lego-inspired theme has become a Calgary landmark that is unique in every way. Over 102,000 kids rely on care from the hospital each year.
Your gift to the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation will fund excellence in family-centred child health programs, specialized life-saving equipment and advanced paediatric research.