Happy 20th Anniversary

It's a big milestone: This year, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital turns 20. Babies born here in 1991 are now in college and many of the first patients have kids of their own.
 

Lucile Salter Packard

Packard Children's has matured, too. Since David and Lucile Packard made the $40 million donation that enabled the hospital to open its doors June 9, 1991, the institution has become a national leader in innovative pediatric and obstetric care.
 
"We have a history of combining superb translated science and medical care with the first-order value of service to children and their families," said David Stevenson, MD, director of the hospital's Johnson Center for Pregnancy and Newborn Services and vice dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine. Early in his career, Stevenson helped plan Packard Children's, traveling with Mrs. Packard and Irving Schulman, MD, then chair of the department of pediatrics at Stanford, to learn what community groups needed in the new hospital.
 
"Our primary goal was to become a hospital that served the communities around us," Stevenson said, noting that both Mrs. Packard, who died before the hospital opened, and the late Dr. Schulman, who served as the hospital's first chief of staff, placed high value on meeting the health-care needs of children in Palo Alto and throughout the region. "And we have done that."
 
But the hospital has also achieved much more. Its research, programs and services now attract patients not just from around the corner, but from around the world. Its clinical care is consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report among the nation's best. And its affiliation with the Stanford University School of Medicine makes it a top training ground for tomorrow's pediatricians.
 
 

Shifting Medical Needs

These distinctions have been achieved during a radical shift in American pediatric care. A generation ago, children were hospitalized primarily for acute, infectious diseases; now, thanks to vaccines and greater understanding of childhood infections, most pediatric hospitalizations treat chronic disease.
 

Packard Children's Hospital was one of the first pediatric hospitals to care for expectant mothers and newborns

"We have a different responsibility toward our patients," said Christy Sandborg, MD, chief of staff at Packard Children's, explaining how the shift from acute to chronic care has changed pediatric hospital medicine. "What we are developing now is a more comprehensive approach for total management of chronically ill children."
 
It all began with an innovative hospital design. Unusual for a children's hospital, the plan incorporated labor and delivery suites, newborn nurseries and neonatal intensive care units – a result of Mrs. Packard's desire to have babies and children of all ages together in the children's hospital. This made Packard Children's one of the first pediatric hospitals to care for new moms and newborns, most of whom had previously been patients at adult hospitals.
 
"This part of our history allowed us to become one of the pre-eminent academic programs in neonatology and perinatology in the country," Stevenson said.
 

Page 2: Still Growing, Bench-to-Bedside Science >>