Boston Children's Hospital Every Child Fund

Sometimes the brightest rainbows appear after the darkest storms. When you donate, desperate families like Jeremiah’s, find answers when they need them most at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Rachael and Jarron woke in the middle of the night to their baby’s cries. Up until now, 13-day-old Jeremiah seemed happy and healthy. But that night, his cry was different.

As a veteran emergency room nurse at another Boston hospital, Rachael is not one to panic, but she was alarmed when her firstborn stopped feeding, his breathing became labored, and he spiked a fever.

At 3 A.M., she called the pediatrician who advised them to go to their local hospital. Instead, the new parents drove from their home straight to Boston Children’s, knowing it was the only place they wanted to bring their baby. “If something was wrong, we wanted to be where the best care was,” said Rachael.

The ER team pulled Jeremiah out of the car seat to find his little heart racing. A lumbar test revealed he had bacterial meningitis, a life-threatening inflammation of the brain and spinal cord membranes. If not treated in time, the infection can be deadly or cause neurological damage or hearing loss—and all these risks were magnified because Jeremiah was so young.

He was moved to the ICU and for the next 18 days, his parents lived at his bedside, watching their son fight for his life.

The hardest part was not being able to hold him or feed him because of all the wires and monitors. Rachael appreciated the way the doctors and nurses kept them informed about every detail of Jeremiah’s progress. The small things they did, like installing a mobile above Jeremiah’s crib, gave them hope.

One day Rachael broke down in tears but was comforted by the attending doctor who told her, “With all my heart, we’re going to do everything we can to save your son’s life and make sure he has a normal life.” Rachael and Jarron believe the swift response and extraordinary care that Jeremiah got at Boston Children’s made all the difference.

The grateful parents brought their son home when he was 31 days old. Jeremiah had no neurological deficits but did experience some hearing loss. Early intervention speech programs and ongoing care at Boston Children’s Audiology Program have carefully tracked his progress.

Now 5, Jeremiah will be fitted for hearing aids this spring so he’ll be ready to start kindergarten in the fall. He’s a wonderful big brother to Elijah, 3, and Savannah, 2. He loves spotting airplanes and helicopters and is an expert on dinosaurs. He can name every dino in his favorite book.

Watch this video to see how you can give more kids like Jeremiah healthy futures. Your generous donations provide lifesaving care and fund groundbreaking discoveries at Boston Children’s Hospital. Thank you.

When parents have a sick child, they come to Boston Children’s Hospital to find lifesaving answers. We provide compassionate and family-centered care at the world's largest pediatric research enterprise. Our stunning breakthroughs have already saved millions of lives and, with your help, we can save many more.

Your contributions make healthy tomorrows possible for kids like Emmie, Rosie and Frannie. Along with their mom, Tracy, they share a rare, inherited blood disorder but it’s not due to genetics. Tracy and her husband Patrick built their family around a loving and lifesaving choice.

“Being born with thalassemia is the best thing that ever happened to me” says Tracy, “It brought me my daughters.” Tracy gets blood transfusions every three weeks for a condition that causes irregular red blood cells and severe anemia. Those with the most serious form of the disorder need regular transfusions to survive. When Tracy and Patrick decided to start a family, they learned there were lots of orphans in China with life-threatening conditions—like thalassemia, and without proper medical care many pass away.

The couple saw Emmie’s picture on an adoption website. Her sweet little face looked up at them with the word ‘thalassemia’ written below. Tracy shared the 2-year-old’s medical file with her hematologist at Boston Children’s. He confirmed she had a severe form of the disease that would require lifelong blood transfusions and lots of specialized care. He also said he’d be delighted to welcome a new patient.

The day after they flew home, Tracy and Patrick brought their daughter straight to Boston Children’s. Emmie’s hemoglobin levels were dangerously low but her medical team was ready. Transfusions required her to be tethered to an IV pole for six hours or more. Luckily, child life specialists were also ready: to blow bubbles to distract Emmie as an IV was inserted; to provide freshly cleaned toys or snacks; to give Tracy a moment to step away and cry because it was so hard to see Emmie in pain.

Adopting a child with significant medical needs wasn’t easy. But watching Emmie grow and thrive with the expert care she got at Boston Children’s gave Tracy and Patrick the courage to adopt a child with thalassemia again…and again. 

One year after the next, they found Rosie and then Frannie in Chinese orphanages. As each joined the family, they followed Emmie to Boston Children’s. Now, every 21 days, Emmie leads the way when they visit for lifesaving transfusions of red blood cells. She helps her little sisters be brave.

Tracy and Patrick feel lucky to live near the best place in the world for their daughters to get pediatric care. They hope that someday gene therapy will be a cure—and know Boston Children’s researchers are working on it. But for now, they’re happy because Emmie, 13, Rosie, 12 and Frannie, 9, are healthy, always giggling and happy to be together.  

Watch this video to see how you can change the lives of kids like Emmie, Rosie and Frannie.

Your gift empowers us to continue caring for children and families both here in Boston, and around the world. Thank you for your support of Boston Children’s Hospital!

Thank you for supporting Boston Children’s Hospital patients and families throughout the years. Your generosity has brought the highest level of medical care to our young patients, critically needed support to families in need, and moments of joy to children and families from around the world.

The year may be coming to an end, but together we continue to provide lifesaving answers to those who need it most. We help the families of sick children with financial resources, making sure they have food on the table and a warm bed each night. And finally, together we provide programs that allow our patients to just be kids in a world that has already taken so much from them.

Click here to view a video called Brave Takes All of Us and learn about some of our amazing patients.

Thank you for ensuring that our patients and families never walk alone.

Best wishes for a joyful holiday season.

The Every Child Fund helps bring lifesaving answers to kids at Boston Children’s Hospital. Philanthropic support helps conquer disease through cutting-edge research happening only here at our hospital; nurture hospitalized children through healing programs like music therapy, art sessions and inspiring dog visits; and support patient families with temporary housing near the hospital, stress-reducing therapies and more. You gift helps kids, like Laila, who come from every state and nearly 100 countries to get lifesaving care.

When Laila got sick, her parents knew they needed to leave their home in Egypt to save her. They lost another child years before because they couldn’t find answers.

Fourteen-month-old Laila had been misdiagnosed nine times by physicians in Egypt and was critically ill. After being treated incorrectly with steroids, her bones were so weak that she broke both of her legs. When a friend in the U.S. told her family about Boston Children’s, they made a desperate 5,500-mile journey to save their child.

At Boston Children’s, a team of specialists and researchers discovered that Laila has an extremely rare, genetic condition—there are only 100 cases reported worldwide. “It’s not one in a million. It’s closer to one in a billion,” says mom, Aya. “But I know Boston Children’s is the best place to be for rare and complex cases. They never give up on Laila and now we have hope.”

Boston has become the family’s second home and they don’t regret the sacrifices they had to make. Laila’s dad, Karim, still works in Egypt to support his family and travels as often as he can to be with them. Aya left a successful career as a teacher and hopes someday to become an interpreter at the hospital to help other families like theirs.

Now 5, Laila is cared for by a dedicated team of Boston Children’s specialists from across the hospital and she participates in two research studies. There are still many unknowns surrounding her health, but for now, she’s thriving. The energetic preschooler enjoys time on the playground with her older sister. Laila loves to run, jump, sing and has started taking ballet lessons.

Watch this video to see how you can change the lives of families like Laila’s.

Your gift empowers us to continue caring for children and families both here in Boston, and around the world. Thank you for your support of Boston Children’s Hospital!

The Every Child Fund (ECF) is Boston Children's Hospital's unrestricted philanthropic fund, which supports the hospital’s greatest needs in the areas of patient care, medical education, research and community health initiatives. Given the increased demands on pediatric health care, the ECF is a critical resource for hospital leadership to direct funds toward highest priorities and critical needs.

When you support the Every Child Fund, you help develop healing therapies, uncover cures for childhood diseases and meet the needs of countless families in distress. As the world changes, our priorities change with it. Crises arise. Opportunities appear. And through it all, our Every Child Fund donors are with us—a vital resource in an unpredictable world.

Patient Care/Family Resources: When a child is very sick, the whole family suffers. Parents make tough sacrifices; siblings may be separated; everyone feels helpless and scared. The families in our care need emotional support, distraction from the long days of hospitalization and healing services that let kids reconnect with their creative, inquisitive selves. Many families struggle with expenses that insurance doesn’t cover, such as food and rent or a place to stay while their child receives treatment. Support to the Every Child Fund provides all of this and more. Child Life Services, patient family housing, extraordinary needs funding— your generosity grows our capacity to meet the needs of more families so they can focus on what’s important, their child.

Research: Boston Children’s operates the world’s largest pediatric research enterprise—an engine that produces and shares knowledge at an unparalleled rate. Our physician-scientists are pursuing new treatments for hundreds of pediatric diseases and collaborating with experts around the globe to bring these solutions to the children who need them most. Your philanthropy equips scientists with state-of-the art technology and gives us the flexibility to act on new research opportunities when they surface.

Community: Children who grow up in poverty face tremendous obstacles—homelessness, inferior schools, violence and loss. They suffer illness and injury at higher rates than kids from more affluent families and are statistically less likely to receive treatment. As a safety net hospital, we serve more low-income children than any other provider in the Boston area. Your unrestricted support extends our comprehensive care and resources to more than 26,000 underserved children and sustains community programs that curtail obesity, asthma and emotional and behavioral disorders in Boston and beyond.

Medical Education: Vital to the future of health care, medical training is a major part of Boston Children’s mission. We train more pediatric residents than any institution in the country, and our trainees go on to lead in communities around the world. Through global observerships, a sophisticated simulation program and our online training platform, OPEN-Pediatrics, we share our medical expertise with clinicians everywhere. Gifts to the Every Child Fund plays an important role in educating the next generation of scientists and caregivers.