Corning Incorporated Foundation Support Key to New Children’s Hospital Building
Corning Incorporated Foundation has given UR Medicine’s Golisano Children’s Hospital $250,000 in support of the new hospital’s combined PET-MRI room in Pediatric Imaging. The PET-MRI will be the first in upstate New York when the new hospital opens next summer, and the one of only a handful in the United States.
“Since our mission is to help improve the quality of life for individuals and families living in the region, supporting Golisano Children’s Hospital was a natural fit for us, especially since the hospital has been the recipient of Foundation funding in the past,” said Karen Martin, president of Corning Incorporated Foundation, headquartered in Corning, NY. “In order to make a real difference, we concentrate Foundation resources where they can have the most impact. We, therefore, tend to support community-based strategic initiatives that benefit the greatest number of people over the longest period of time.”
Every year, Golisano Children’s Hospital serves more than 70,000 children and their families, including 14,000 from the Greater Chemung Valley. It is the Finger Lakes region’s only children’s hospital.
Commercial Technology Director Paul Then and Commercial Account Manager Charles Phillip, both in Corning’s Advanced Optics division, championed the idea of the Foundation funding the PET-MRI room in the new hospital. Instead of a patient undergoing positron-emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, the PET-MRI machine combines the roles of the two and will, in turn, produce more detailed images and reduce the patient’s potential exposure to radiation. Not only will the machine allow pediatric oncologists to diagnose cancer more quickly, but it will also aid in the general diagnosis of neurological diseases and provide more information than ever before.
The new PET-MRI room will be located on the ground floor of the new $145 million Golisano Children’s Hospital, set to open next summer. The eight-story building is approximately 245,000 square feet and will give patients and their families private rooms, a greatly expanded Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and a dedicated imaging suite, built around the needs of children and their families. To learn more about the new hospital, visit www.givetokids.urmc.edu.
Over the past 62 years, Corning Incorporated Foundation has contributed more than $140 million through its programs of giving. The Foundation focuses support in communities in which Corning employees live and work, including the Rochester area. Additional grant recipient organizations in the Rochester area include Monroe Community College and the American Cancer Society B. Thomas Golisano Hope Lodge and Hospitality House.