Why support CHEO?
Most people know that The Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario provides care for children and youth from eastern Ontario, western Quebec and Canada’s northern communities. What many don’t realize is that caring for tiny babies, children and teenagers is much different than caring for adults. Specialized medical equipment for pediatric care is very expensive and the doctors, nurses and researchers at CHEO need the most up-to-date equipment to care for our region’s children and youth. CHEO’s patients range in age from pre-mature babies weighing little more than a few grams to 18-yearolds battling obesity — and kids of every age, size and weight in between. Equipment must match this vast assortment of sizes but it’s not only items like blood pressure cuffs, incubators and surgical tools that fall into the “one size does not fit all” category. Each child’s dose of medication is tailored to their individual size. Pharmaceutical companies do not develop most drugs for use with children in mind and they do not do the rigorous testing necessary to determine the appropriate dosage for children, let alone the appropriate dosage for each size and weight in the spectrum. CHEO’s pharmaceutical team answers the call in this regard. These are but two examples of why it costs CHEO more money to care for our children and why the CHEO Foundation works tirelessly with the community to raise these much needed funds.
“CHEO offers unique services for children and youth that are not available anywhere else in our region — helping kids and families be their healthiest,” says Alex Munter, CHEO’s Chief Executive Officer. “Delivering specialized services to the very diverse range of CHEO’s young patients can be costly. As the rest of the healthcare system retools to meet the needs of an aging population, CHEO’s unique role in our community matters now more than ever.”
Families with a child suffering with a serious health issue or chronic condition experience many forms of stress. The financial stress alone can be overwhelming as many CHEO families pay for the day to day expenses of running a household, along with possible healthcare expenses. The financial burden can sometimes become very debilitating for a family.
CHEO NEEDS YOUR HELP
The parents of CHEO patients are often very young themselves and CHEO is renowned for supporting the needs of the entire family. Parents of CHEO patients range in age from teenagers through to those in their mid-fifties with the vast majority falling within the range of 25 to 35 years of age — just starting out in life.
This is the age group that relies heavily on CHEO’s services, and while some CHEO families have the ability to financially support the CHEO Foundation, many of them do not have the financial means to be donors to the hospital that is caring for their children.
In the Ottawa region, we are blessed with world-class hospitals and healthcare facilities and fortunately many adult patients and their families provide financial support to these hospitals. Many are at a stage in their lives when their children are grown, they are mortgage free and more financially secure than they were as young parents. These donors should be commended and thanked by all of us because these hospitals need, and are very worthy of, this support.
“One of the challenges CHEO faces is that we cannot expect infants, children, teenagers and young parents to provide this type of financial support. This is where your support becomes so important,” says Kevin Keohane, President and CEO of the CHEO Foundation.
One area of fundraising where CHEO is hoping to increase support is memorial giving. Many people choose to honour their loved ones by requesting memorial gifts to benefit the institution where someone spent their final days, or to a charity related to the disease that caused their death. The result is that this skews a massive portion of charitable support toward adult health care and research organizations. The challenge for CHEO is finding its place among the healthcare organizations which receive these transformational gifts. By including CHEO in their support of these exceptional causes, people can add the one thing to their giving legacy that was most important to them during their lives — the health and well-being of their children. Designating CHEO as an option for memorial giving will provide an important new source of funding, and assist CHEO in touching the lives of over 500,000 families each year.
We hope that you will tune in to the CHEO Telethon on CTV this weekend to witness some of the incredible work being done by our health care professionals and researchers. They are caring for the Number 1 reason why CHEO needs your support … our children and youth.