Dayton Children’s Hospital is thrilled to have received generous support from the Berry Family throughout the years. The family has enabled us to transform care for our region’s children.
In 2014, Dayton Children’s embarked on a historic project with a historic campaign to construct an eight-story, 260,000 square foot facility in the center of our main campus. The patient tower was designed to accommodate the latest research findings for pediatric cancer care, the infrastructure for delivering state-of-the-art care for critically ill newborns, improved patient rooms, increased access to services, and an increase in patient beds from 155-170. The strategic investment in Dayton Children’s campus was a significant opportunity to improve the health of our region’s children and keep families close to home when our children need medical treatment. With a gift of $1.2 million in 2015, the Berry Family became a lead donor to the project.
The patient tower is transforming care for children by supporting better outcomes, increasing continuity of care, supporting life-saving care, and providing children an optimal healing environment. This includes a newborn intensive care unit with single-family rooms to reduce infection and increase privacy, the Mills Family Cancer & Blood Disorder Center designed to provide inpatient and outpatient care in one location, and updated life-saving care spaces for the Wallace Critical Care Center. The tower also includes many child- and family-friendly enhancements to help reduce stress and improve healing. These include indoor/outdoor play spaces and family lounges on each unit. Also relocated to the tower is the Specialty Pediatrics Units containing a child-friendly healing environment for kids recovering from complex surgeries and other treatments and home to the Berry Family Lounge, named in recognition of the family’s generous donation.
Through the Berry Family’s support of the project, we have created a beautiful 8-story building with a bright, open appearance that says “welcome,” a “things that fly” theme throughout the new tower that honors our region, single-family rooms throughout the new units, an efficient layout to enhance continuity of care, more room to accommodate the latest life-saving critical care technology, spaces for play and family time, and attention to patient safety and privacy.