Join The Big Kix 96-1 and our local Albertsons Grocery Stores as we raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network! Thursday September 15th from 6am-6pm. We’ll be asking YOU to help save children’s lives. The money raised will stay right here in our local community to help our neighbors! To make a pledge and become a miracle maker, on September 15th, call (337)430-4100. Or text SWLA to 51555. It’s our Annual Mediathon benefitting the Children’s Miracle Network with Albertsons, Burnworth’s A/C, Lake Charles Toyota, Cox Cox Filo & Wilson, Remax One & C&C Home Appliances.
Our Annual Children’s Miracle Mediathon is brought to by
In association with
Read more about Children’s Miracle Network below
Children’s Miracle Network of CHRISTUS St. Patrick Foundation
About Children’s Miracle Network in General (CMN)
- Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) was founded in 1983 by Marie Osmond and her family, John Schneider, Mick Shannon and Joe Lake.
- Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) was founded with 2 simple goals:
- Help as many children as possible by raising funds for children’s hospitals.
- Keep funds in the community in which they were raised to help local children.
- In the beginning, CMN was a 3-day televised broadcast raising money for 22 children’s hospitals. Today, CMN has 170 member hospitals in the United States and Canada and is one of the leading children’s charities in North America.
- In 1988, The Osmond Foundation chose CHRISTUS St. Patrick Health System to be the Children’s Miracle Network Hospital for Southwest Louisiana.
- So this is our 30th Anniversary of CMN at CHRISTUS St. Patrick Health System.
- This year we’ve expanded our CHRISTUS ministry in Southwest Louisiana to include CHRISTUS Lake Area Hospital.
- CHRISTUS Lake Area Hospital has a full Labor & Delivery as well as a Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, meaning we can treat the sickest of infants at the facility – right here at home.
- CHRISTUS St. Patrick Hospital and CHRISTUS Lake Area Hospital are the exclusive CMN Hospitals for Southwest Louisiana. Our Children’s Miracle Network serves an area from the Sabine River east to the Atchafalaya Basin and from Beauregard Parish south to the Gulf of Mexico.
- How is CMN different from other Children’s Charities?
- The money raised stays local and benefits the local hospital and community.
- CMN hospitals must be a non-profit hospital that cannot turn a patient away.
- Some children’s charities raise money across the country to fund research and treatment for one hospital in the United States. While child from your community may one day travel to that hospital to receive treatment, that hospital does not benefit all of the children in your community.
How Do CMN Funds Get Used?
Regardless of how the funds are raised, all Children’s Miracle Network funds are used to help our local kids.
- Inside our hospitals, we fund special pediatric surgical and treatment equipment at both of our CHRISTUS Hospitals in Southwest Louisiana. This includes (just to mention a few):
- Ear-Nose-Throat Pediatric Surgical Equipment – right-sized to place tubes in ears, clear sinus passages and more.
- Pediatric Vein-finders for our Emergency Department – when you are in the Emergency Department –whether you are an adult or a child – you certainly don’t want the nurse having problems locating your veins… so Vein-finders are particularly helpful in this situation.
- A Transport Isolette used to transport babies born prematurely to CHRISTUS Lake Area Hospital. This Isolette, recently funded with Children’s Miracle Network funds, is really amazing… it is like a special incubator on wheels, providing prematurely born babies with oxygen, temperature control, complete monitoring and more – and it fits inside a helicopter or ambulance. This equipment will definitely save lives!
- We also fund some wellness programs outside of our Hospital Walls – through our school-based support, including:
- GoNoodle – Safety for our local athletes. Over the past several years, our CMN funding has provided over 80 Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) to Middle and High schools in our five-parish service area. An AED is a portable device that checks heart rhythm and can send an electric shock to the heart to try to restore a normal rhythm. While we hope schools never have to use them, having an AED readily available, easily accessible at school or on the road, provides a safety net for the student athletes of Southwest Louisiana.
- Lots of physical activity for our school-aged kids through GoNoodle. GoNoodle is an online, in-classroom tool that combines movement and academics and engages students in 3-5 minute moderate to vigorous exercises they can perform next to their desks. With over 6,000,000 minutes of physical activity recorded with GoNoodle in Calcasieu Parish last school year, we know this program is a Huge Hit with both students and teachers. We hope to help fund GoNoodle in all five parishes we cover within the next five years.
- School-Based Health-Center Opportunities. CHRISTUS St. Patrick Hospital operates five School-Based Health Centers (SBHCs) in Southwest Louisiana, providing consistent care through about 22,000 student patient visits each year. Right now in our schools, there are kids who don’t have easy access to basic hygiene products like toothpaste and toothbrushes, deodorant, and hairbrushes. CMN is working with our SBHC leaders to develop a Virtual Closet of these products that our associates can give to students as our associates see fit. We are committed to children having what they need to take good care of themselves and this initiative is one way we are fulfilling this commitment.
And How Will They Be Used Now?
We’ve talked about how CMN funds have been used up to this point – and now, we have some very special needs identified within our Well-Baby Nursery and our Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). These are items we need to fund through events like this Radiothon!
Well-born Nursery Needs
- Radiant and Portable Warmers:
- Keeping babies warm is one of the most critical components of high-quality health care for infants.
- Radiant Warmers allow nurses to ensure a consistent, safe and warm environment for all babies in the Wellborn environment.
- A Portable Warmer allows us to keep the baby in the mom’s room during the initial bath, ensuring the baby’s temperature remains consistent and allowing for the benefits of the mom being a part of the first bath.
- Quantity Needed and Approximate Cost: 20,000 + tax and shipping per unit; 4 needed now
- Blanket Warmer:
- Warm blankets provide both mental and physical benefits.
- From a mental-health perspective, warm blankets help reduce anxiety and provide the patient with a sense of warmth and well-being.
- From a physical standpoint, the blanket serves as a benefit because it helps to avoid hypothermia and keeps the patient’s core temperature steady, as a newborn’s temperature tends to fluctuate.
- Quantity Needed and Approximate Cost: $20,000 + tax and shipping; 1 needed now
NICU Needs
- “Giraffe” Beds:
- The “Giraffe” pairs an incubator and radiant warmer to create a seamless healing microenvironment for all babies. They are called “Giraffe” beds because the radiant warmer arm lifts above the mattress for ease of access while still providing critical, uninterrupted and uniform radiant warmth for the baby.
- Quantity Needed and Approximate Cost: $31,000 + tax & shipping per unit; 4 needed now
- Syringe Pumps:
- These are used for accurate and safe medication delivery, ensuring precise medication dosage delivery and reducing adverse drug events.
- Quantity Needed and Approximate Cost: $3,000 + tax & shipping per unit; 4 needed now
- Ventilators:
- The majority of the time, babies born prematurely need ventilation support because the lungs are the last area of our bodies to develop. In addition, some full-term babies are born with underdeveloped or injured lungs.
- In both of these cases, assisted ventilation is required to support breathing until the patient’s respiratory efforts are sufficient.
- If handled appropriately from the beginning, using the right ventilator equipment, babies born with breathing issues can often survive to lead full, happy and healthy lives with no long-term lung injury or damage.
- Quantity Needed and Approximate Cost: $10,000 for software upgrade per unit; 1 needed now
A Little History
CHRISTUS St. Patrick Foundation
The mission of the CHRISTUS St. Patrick Foundation is to expand the philanthropic efforts of CHRISTUS St. Patrick Hospital.
As the healthcare needs of our community continue to change, the ability to respond to those needs is dependent upon philanthropic support. The CHRISTUS St. Patrick Foundation was formed in 2005 to meet those needs by promoting philanthropy and charitable giving in Southwest Louisiana. The Foundation assists CHRISTUS St. Patrick Hospital in achieving its mission and vision by providing resources to be a leader and advocate in creating exemplary health care services, processes, and structures that improve the health of individuals and of local and global communities.
The Foundation has a working regional board that represents the cultural diversity of the community. This union of representatives from Southwest Louisiana helps to assure that the Foundation is mission driven and is governed by a board of citizens responsive to the community, based on the values of philanthropy, community and diversity, operated in an ethical and prudent manner, and providing citizens an opportunity to participate in the civic life of the community.
The goal of the Foundation is to reach out to the community, to educate people about the care at CHRISTUS St. Patrick Hospital, and to involve the community in helping us future healthcare. Visit the Foundation’s website at www.stpatrickfoundation.org.
History of St. Patrick Hospital
In the early 1900s, Lake Charles, La., was the center of a growing lumber industry, yet it had no hospitals. Seeing the need for a quality medical facility, John Greene Martin, M.D., president of the local medical society, and Rev. Hubert Cramers, rector of Immaculate Conception Church, set about to provide for one.
They approached the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word in Galveston, Texas, for help in setting up a hospital in Lake Charles like the one the sisters had established in Galveston. When the hospital was finished, Dr. Martin, a native of Ireland, insisted that it be named after St. Patrick, the patron saint of his homeland.
The new three-story hospital was dedicated on St. Patrick’s Day in 1908 as St. Patrick Sanitarium, with 50 beds, an operating room and a sterilizing room. The name was later changed to St. Patrick Hospital which has continued its tradition of dedication and quality medical care for almost 100 years.
History of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word and CHRISTUS Health
In 1866 three brave sisters from Lyon, France, answered the call of Bishop Claude Dubuis to minister to the “sick and infirm of every kind.” These first members of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word worked to fulfill this call by opening Texas’ first Catholic hospital in Galveston and, three years later, San Antonio’s first private hospital.
With the move to San Antonio in 1869 and the difficulty of traveling between the two cities, the three Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word congregations became independent and continued their missions of healing.
Out of the original call grew the Houston-based Sisters of Charity Health Care System and the San Antonio-based Incarnate Word Health Care System. In 1999 CHRISTUS Health was formed to join the two health systems and strengthen the sisters’ faith-based, not-for-profit health care ministry in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Utah and Oklahoma. This co-sponsored health care system is one of the top 10 largest Catholic health systems in the nation. The system will take a leadership role in the health care field, furthering its Mission to extend the healing ministry of Jesus Christ.
CHRISTUS St. Patrick Health System celebrates 110 Years of Service to the Southwest Louisiana community this year.