Penn State Health Children's Hospital
Penn State Health Children's Hospital maintains the region's only Level IV (highest level), state-of-the-art neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and Level I (highest level) pediatric trauma center. It is staffed by 200 pediatric medical and surgical specialists.
History
Penn State Health Children's Hospital is the sole beneficiary of charity, Four Diamonds which started in 1972 to provide monetary support to childhood cancer patients at PSCH. Four Diamonds is the sole beneficiary of the annual Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon (THON) event at Penn State University's University Park campus. It is the largest student run charity in the world. Since 1977, THON has raised more than $219 million.
In October 2006, Penn State Health Children's Hospital's trauma center was one of the receiving hospitals' for victims of the West Nickel Mines School shooting in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, treating three of the pediatric victims from the shooting.
Originally, Penn State Health Children's Hospital was housed in a five-story building opened in 2013. In Spring, 2018 Penn State began a $148 million, 126,000-square-foot vertical expansion to the building. In fall 2020 a vertical expansion on the building was completed adding three floors and moving the Women and Babies Center, a 56-bed Level IV neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and the state's only Small Baby Unit from the former location in the main hospital.
In July 2020, grocery store company, GIANT donated $1 million to the hospital to help support the three-floor expansion, expand the pediatric trauma and injury prevention program, and to expand the "Penn State PRO Wellness Healthy Champions program."