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Community Leaders Come Together to Support Health Care for Women and Infants at UAB
 The members of the Committee for the Future of Women’s Health Care at UAB are passionate about improving the lives of the women and babies of Alabama. By raising awareness and support for UAB’s Women and Infants Initiative, including development of the new Women and Infants Center at UAB, this group of community leaders will help women’s health care make a quantum leap forward.
“I certainly hope that this committee will be able to raise the capital to complete the bricks-and-mortar part of the project, but I also hope that we’ll educate our community in the process,” says Theresa Bruno, committee member and president of THB Productions. “Alabama still ranks low in the nation in the health status of women and children. I want to change that, and I want our community to want to change that. We tend to voice women’s concerns differently than men do, so I think it’s important for women to work on behalf of women.”
The hope for the committee is that it will give voice to the health challenges facing women and infants statewide as well as opportunities for making positive change. Committee member Carolyn Harper, community relations administrator for Honda Manufacturing of Alabama, believes in this vision. “One person can always do something, but in numbers there is great strength and the ability to do so much more,” she says. “With the Women and Infants Center, a dream is in the process of becoming a reality, and this committee can help make that happen.”
Maternal and fetal medicine specialists from the departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Pediatrics at UAB are principal providers of high-risk care for women and infants from around Alabama. With the state’s only Level IIID Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (RNICU), UAB delivers specialized care to the region’s most vulnerable infants but has been constrained by growing demand, capacity limitations, and outdated facilities. Obstetrical and neonatal special-care services are now cramped and housed in some of the oldest parts of the hospital. Despite the limits, UAB sets the standards for clinical outcomes in nationwide comparisons.
Committee member Candace Wason knows firsthand the quality of care UAB delivers in high-risk situations. After eight years of infertility, she became pregnant with her now 19-year-old son and chose to come to UAB for care when complications arose. She ended up staying in the hospital for nine weeks. Before coming to Birmingham, Wason was manager of the high-risk obstetrics floor at Northwestern University and so was well aware of the complications of prematurity. She says that although she was frightened and her pregnancy was extremely complex, the care she received at UAB was outstanding. “The beauty of UAB is that there are always specialty-trained physicians in the house, and you can always call them. And I think this new facility is really going to help UAB recruit even more outstanding doctors.”
For improved patient access and economy of construction, the new Women and Infants Center will be housed in more than 400,000 square feet of space in a state-of-the-art, block-long facility being built at 5th and 6th Avenues and 17th and 18th Streets South. Located on the first through the seventh floors, it will cost almost $165 million to complete. The new building also will house the Hazelrig-Salter Radiation Oncology Facility and two floors of physicians’ offices, and it will feature the Limbaugh Park of Hope. To provide access to a complete continuum of acute care, the Women and Infants Center will be connected by sky bridges on three levels to University Hospital’s North Pavilion and, when completed, to the new Children’s Hospital. The center will serve as a statewide resource not only for maternal-fetal medicine services—including an inpatient antepartum unit for women with complicated pregnancies—but also for a wide range of female-related services including gynecology, gyn-oncology, reproductive and infertility care, pelvic medicine, and reconstructive surgery services.
“I think we’re so blessed to have UAB in our city, in our state, and in this region, and this will add another dimension to the hospital and to the university as a whole,” says committee member Betty McMahon. “It’s something we’ve needed at UAB for a long time.”
When it opens in spring 2010, the new facility will increase UAB’s capacity to care for Alabama’s women and babies and also will include one-and-a-half floors of space for future development in response to patient needs. Although the center will offer Alabama’s only supratertiary NICU, the most modern C-section and post-anesthesia recovery suites, state-of-the-art patient-care rooms, and technologically advanced patient/staff communication and infant-security systems, it is designed, first and foremost, to be patient friendly and family focused. All rooms will be private, accommodating overnight stays by family members and support people. Family lounges will offer computers, Internet access, and playrooms. Education space, parent sleep rooms, laundry and shower facilities, a lactation center, and a family hospitality center will help support patient and family needs. Onsite and valet parking also will be available.
“We are truly grateful to the women serving on the Committee for the Future of Women’s Health Care at UAB,” says Ray Watts, interim CEO of the UAB Health System and chair of the Department of Neurology. “Their commitment of time to raising awareness and financial support is playing a significant role in seeing this important initiative come to fruition. We also are very appreciative of the individuals, foundations, and corporations that have made significant contributions to building this world-class center. UAB is committed to improving the health and lives of the women and infants of this state by offering expanded services to a greater number of patients, and this is a major step toward achieving that goal.”
“UAB already has an incredible track record in what they are doing with women and infant care,” Bruno adds. “The new Women and Infants Center will continue to be an important provider of health care for women who don’t have access, but it also will provide a world-class research and patient-care facility for all women regardless of socioeconomic status. And it will mean economic development for UAB, Birmingham, and the state, allowing UAB to become an even bigger contributor than it already is. I’m so proud of UAB for approaching this in a way that allows women to help other women.”
Quantum Leap Forward
The Daniel Foundation of Alabama has made a generous leadership gift toward the Women and Infants Center, hoping it will serve as a stimulus for other significant support. “UAB has some of the best physicians in the nation, if not the world, and they need to be provided with the best environment—one conducive to world-class health care,” says Maria Kennedy, executive director of the Daniel Foundation and a member of the Committee for the Future of Women’s Health Care at UAB. “The foundation board really hopes that this gift will make a difference, that it will help catalyze others to give and help improve health care for women and infants.”
Committee member Ronne Hess says that the center offers a unique giving opportunity. “The Women and Infants Center at UAB is a perfect place to honor the women in our lives—family, teachers, professors, clergy—who have been really important to us but maybe have not had their name in lights,” she says. “Honoring those women is important, and I think this is a beautiful place to do it.” Hess believes in the importance of women taking the lead in this initiative. “If women don’t ask women—if those of us who know how to give don’t teach other women, don’t show them how to use their strength—we’re doing a disservice to our daughters and granddaughters.”
For more information or to make a contribution to the Women and Infants Initiative, contact Roberta Shapiro at (205) 934-3389 or rshapiro@uasom.uab.edu.
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