Accelerate New Mexico
UNM Children’s Hospital
Building the Future for Students, Faculty, and Communities
A healthy New Mexico is a stronger New Mexico. The mission of UNM Children’s Hospital (UNMCH) is to provide New Mexico’s children with comprehensive, family-centered health care that is unequaled in the state and region. We envision a society where all of New Mexico's children enjoy access to a full range of family-centered pediatric health care services that allow each child to achieve optimal health.
Through the Accelerate New Mexico campaign, we aspire to achieve our highest priorities to serve New Mexican families to our utmost ability.
Overview:
As a public teaching hospital, we seek to enrich the quality of life of New Mexico’s culturally and ethnically diverse populations as we create, evaluate, apply, and disseminate knowledge to improve the health status of infants, children, and young adults throughout New Mexico and the region. We also serve as a safety-net hospital for pediatric patients and serve the whole region regardless of a patient’s financial status.
UNMCH is the state’s only comprehensive, multidisciplinary child abuse team, which includes prevention, education, evaluation, and care components. With the only Level IV neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in New Mexico, we provide highly specialized care not always available elsewhere. We offer a fellowship program that provides training for physicians interested in neonatology specialization. We have many subspecialties at UNMCH that aren’t available elsewhere statewide, which benefits our patients with complex medical problems. Also, many of our specialties provide outreach clinics outside of Albuquerque. UNMCH was the first hospital in Albuquerque to earn Baby-Friendly designation, and is one of only 170 children’s hospitals across the U.S. and Canada that are part of the Children’s Miracle Network. UNMCH provides the best possible behavioral healthcare for all New Mexicans, including marginalized and minoritized populations, across their lifespans.
List of Priorities:
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New Mexico consistently ranks last or near last in statistics related to child well-being, including early death, child maltreatment, high rates of injury and suicide, food insecurity, housing insecurity, and poverty. The center that we propose would address the causes of child maltreatment and injury and educate the community and healthcare workers to significantly impact our ranking of child well-being. In addition, it would create partnerships with the UNM College of Education, due to their expertise in early childhood development.
With the Child Maltreatment and Injury Prevention Center, our goal is to make New Mexico be the best state in which to raise a child.
$9,620,000 million of philanthropic funding will help us to:
Hire faculty and staff: $2 million
Purchase equipment: $50,000
Purchase operational and technical supplies: $100,000
Provide programs and services such as patient and family support and community outreach and education: $100,000
Establish research chairs, professorships, and fellowships: $7 million
Provide education and telehealth services: $70,000
Fund student scholarships: $300,000
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We want to create spaces that provide state-of-the-art care for our most vulnerable infants while providing support and resources for the family. In New Mexico, the number of babies born with substance abuse disorder is increasing. Research shows that outcomes for these babies improve when NICU spaces are designed for a low-stimulation environment. In addition, having spaces for parents to stay at their child’s bedside allows them to bond with their new baby more easily, potentially decreases the length of stay, and improves developmental outcomes.
It is also important that parents have spaces outside of the unit, such as milk rooms for mothers, to decompress and manage their stress levels. Maternal stress decreases breast milk production, and one of the functions of the milk room is to manage donor milk, maternal breast milk, and formula in a manner that supports the baby’s health. Milk rooms are becoming standards of practice in hospitals across the nation, and they decrease the incidents of complications related to prematurity.
$41.3 million of philanthropic funding will allow us to:
Renovate the clinical care space: $10 million
Create respite spaces for families: $10 million
Hire respite space staffing: $150,000
Create a milk room for mothers: $1 million
Hire milk room staff: $150,000
Retrofit the NICU for bedside access: $20 million
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UNMCH houses many unique specialties that are not available elsewhere in our state and region. Patients and families travel long distances to receive specialty care here. As part of our mission, we also educate physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, and other professional and ancillary staff to care for patients with unique diagnoses and needs. The specialty case management program initiative allows us to expand patient- and family-centered care as well as provider education opportunities.
$9,620,000 million of philanthropic funding will help us to:
Provide funding for additional faculty and staff: $2 million
Purchase medical equipment: $50,000
Purchase operational and technical supplies: $100,000
Create and expand patient/family support and community outreach and education programs and services: $100,000
Support research through the creation of chairs, professorships, and fellowships: $7 million
Expand our education and telehealth capabilities: $70,000
Provide more student scholarships: $300,000
Anna Duran, MD, MBA
Chief Medical Officer, Pediatrician
“As New Mexico’s only dedicated children’s hospital, we embrace the profound responsibility and privilege of caring for our state’s most vulnerable children. As part of UNM Health, New Mexico’s only academic medical center, our patients have access to the most advanced pediatric specialty and primary care in the Southwest.
Caring for children with some of the state’s most complex and challenging medical conditions requires extraordinary expertise, advanced technology, and unwavering compassion. It also requires a community that believes every child deserves the very best. Thanks to the generosity of grateful patients, families and donors, we are able to provide enhanced programs, advanced equipment, family-centered services, and vital support that extend far beyond traditional funding. Every gift helps ensure that children and their families receive the exceptional care, comfort and hope they need, when they need it most.
Your generosity is an investment in healthier families, stronger communities and a brighter future for New Mexican children. Together, we can Deliver More for every child, every patient, every family and every community we serve.”
Only One
New Mexico’s only dedicated children’s hospital
Largest
Largest Child Life program in the state
60K+
60,000+ children treated each year
We are proud to be New Mexico’s only academic center and healthcare leader in children’s care, pediatric medical training, and pediatric research. With your generous support, we can build upon our legacy of care and improve the physical, mental, and behavioral health and well-being of children throughout the state and the Southwest.