Beaumont Children’s secures $1.7 million in grant funding

METRO DETROIT — As part of a big donation from the Children’s Miracle Network, Corewell Health Beaumont Children’s received $1.7 million in grants.

According to a press release, the grant funding will go toward pediatric programs at all Beaumont Children’s hospitals, including locations in Dearborn, Farmington Hills, Grosse Pointe, Royal Oak, Trenton, Taylor, Troy and Wayne.

“It’s basically services that support children in the hospital and their families,” said Director of Children’s Miracle Network for Beaumont Children’s Charlotte Alex. “None of it is covered by insurance, so CMN donors fully fund that program.”

Alex stated that every dollar donated to CMN in southeast Michigan will go back into Beaumont pediatric programs, services and equipment. She continued to say CMN has been supporting Beaumont for almost 40 years and that the southeast Michigan community has raised more than $80 million for Beaumont Children’s.

“All local dollars stay local to help local children and their families in their most dire need,” she said. “Child Life Services provides animal-assisted therapy and art therapy, music therapy. They are professionally trained … child-life specialists who come into the room and bring sunshine, they bring smiles and laughs, they help a child cope with an upcoming procedure.”

Dr. Matthew Denenberg, the chair of pediatrics at Corewell Health East, said the grant funding allows the hospitals to continue to develop the cancer center, neurosciences program, neonatology units and intensive care unit so they can continue to provide care to children without having to leave the area.

“The whole goal is to —and that’s why Children’s Miracle Network exists — is to raise funds so that children can be treated locally,” he said. “They can be treated appropriately and expertly locally. And that’s been the benefit. We’ve been able to develop these services over the years right here in southeast Michigan so patients don’t have to leave the area.”

Items that will be funded through these grants include bedside monitors, a neonatal intensive care unit milk bank room, surgical camera heads, sleep recliners, pediatric laryngoscopy, an infant phototherapy radiometer, and a bike day, which provides customized adaptive bikes for children who have special needs.

Denenberg also is a practicing physician who works in emergency medicine in Royal Oak. For the Royal Oak Children’s Hospital, he said this latest round of funding will help it with getting critical care monitors.

“This last cycle is helping us with … (the) Child Life Program, which is huge,” he said. “Child Life is such an important part of the work that we do taking care of kids in our emergency department and in our inpatient units when kids are in sick. It’s supporting our operating room, our pediatric or children’s operating rooms to make sure that we have the right equipment and supplies for our, this time around for example, for our (ear, nose and throat) doctors to make sure they’re taking appropriate care of, proper care of children with the ENT problems. So it’s also being used this time around for our oncology program.”

Alex said that without this grant funding, it’s likely that none of these programs would exist, and they didn’t exist before Children’s Miracle Network.

“Most of (the $80 million raised) is $1 at a time through our corporate partners and our event sponsors and our event attendees,” she said. Sponsors include Speedway, Costco, Walmart, Sam’s Club, IHOP and Panda Express.

“That’s where the majority of that money comes from, from our community, and we’re grateful,” she said.