January 30, 2018

Dr. Huda Zoghbi was awarded the National Order of the Cedar, Knight grade by Lebanese President General Michel Aoun at a ceremony held in January at the Presidential Palace in Baabda.

Zoghbi is the founder and director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute (NRI) at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and holds the Ralph D. Feigin, MD, Endowed Chair in Pediatrics.

This prestigious honor touches close to home as Zoghbi was born and raised in Beruit, Lebanon’s capital and largest city. She received her Bachelor of Science degree from American University Beirut (AUB).

“It is an honor for AUB and indeed for Lebanon that the President of the Republic of Lebanon has conferred on Huda Zoghbi the Order of the Cedar,” said American University Beirut President Fadlo R. Khuri. “Thus, the greatest and most decorated scientist to have completed her undergraduate education at our university over the last several decades, a woman whose work is transforming the science and medicine of some of the world’s most serious neurological diseases, is now recognized by her native country’s highest award.”

Zoghbi’s hard work and dedication to the medical field spans through Texas Children’s and beyond. The National Order of the Cedar is a public service award and Lebanon’s highest honor.

“I am deeply honored and humbled to receive this great honor,” Zoghbi said. “I owe a lot of gratitude to my family who shaped me and to the institutions that educated me: Makassed and the American University of Beirut. I feel fortunate that I grew up and spent my formative years in Lebanon and I hope the culture that inspired me to seek knowledge will continue to inspire and empower the youth of Lebanon.”

January 23, 2018

Texas Children’s Hospital is proud to announce the opening of its ninth Texas Children’s Urgent Care clinic. Located at 12620 Woodforest Blvd., Suite 160, Texas Children’s Urgent Care East offers high-quality, efficient and affordable pediatric care at a convenient location.

Texas Children’s Urgent Care East is open Monday through Friday, 4:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday, noon to 8 p.m. The clinic is staffed by board certified pediatricians who diagnose and treat a wide variety of ailments, illnesses and conditions, including: asthma, strep throat, fever, minor burns, influenza, ear infections, allergic reactions and more. Procedures provided include: antibiotic injections, breathing treatments, fracture care and splinting, IV (intravenous) fluids, lab services, laceration repair and X-rays onsite.

Oftentimes, families turn to an emergency center after hours, on weekends or perhaps even during the day, when a significant event occurs with their child. Though the emergency center is the right place for some incidents or ailments, the majority of the time minor illnesses can and should be treated at a pediatric urgent care facility.

Texas Children’s Urgent Care accepts major insurance plans and has self-pay rates, which are less than emergency center charges, and there are no hospital fees. A complete list of insurance plans is available on the website. Texas Children’s Urgent Care specializes in after-hours care, but does not replace the need for children to have a general pediatrician. Routine physical exams and vaccinations are services that should be obtained from a general pediatrician, and these services are not available at Texas Children’s Urgent Care.

Texas Children’s Urgent Care has eight additional convenient locations:

  • Cinco Ranch, 9727 Spring Green Blvd., Suite 900 Katy, TX 77494, 281-789-6300
  • Memorial, 12850 Memorial Drive, Suite 210 Houston, TX 77024, 832-827-4000 Memorial
  • The Woodlands, 4775 W. Panther Creek Drive, Suite C300 The Woodlands, TX 77381, 281-417-0870
  • Main Campus, 6621 Fannin, Suite 2240 Houston, TX 77030, 832-824-2000
  • Pearland, 2701 Pearland Parkway, Suite 190, Pearland, TX 77581, 281-485-6400
  • The Vintage, 10420 Louetta Road, Suite 104, Houston, TX 77070, 281-251-0269
  • Fairfield, 28070 Highway 290, Suite 100, Cypress, TX 77433, 281-758-4770
  • The Heights, 2200 Yale Street, Houston, TX, 77008, 713-861-6104

For more information about Texas Children’s Urgent Care, click here.

To prepare for the opening of Texas Children’s Urgent Care Westgate in Austin, Texas Children’s has opened a Welcome Center adjacent to the future urgent care site on the south side of Austin. The Welcome Center is being used for human resources and philanthropy. It also will serve as a means to create brand awareness for Texas Children’s in the Austin community.

The new office, located at 4477 South Lamar Blvd., opened January 8 and is primarily being used to recruit future employees and on-board staff. The space will not be used for clinical services.

“We are very excited to have this new office in Austin,” said Texas Children’s Executive Vice President Michelle Riley-Brown. “It marks our entrance into the fastest growing city in America with a pediatric population of almost a half a million.”

Texas Children’s Urgent Care Westgate is scheduled to open in March and will be modeled after Texas Children’s other urgent care facilities, all of which are located in the Greater Houston area and offer high-quality, efficient and affordable pediatric care at a convenient location.

Open Monday through Friday, 4:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday, noon to 8 p.m., the clinic will be staffed by board certified pediatricians who diagnose and treat a wide variety of ailments, illnesses and conditions, including: asthma, strep throat, fever, minor burns, influenza, ear infections, allergic reactions and more. Procedures to be provided include: antibiotic injections, breathing treatments, fracture care and splinting, IV (intravenous) fluids, lab services, laceration repair and X-rays onsite.

“Oftentimes, families turn to an emergency center after hours, on weekends or perhaps even during the day, when a significant event occurs with their child,” said Kay Tittle, president of Texas Children’s Urgent Care. “Though the emergency center is the right place for some incidents or ailments, the majority of the time minor illnesses can and should be treated at a pediatric urgent care facility.”

Texas Children’s opened its first urgent care facility in 2014 and has since seen tremendous success in getting pediatric patients where they need to be to receive the proper treatment for their illness or injury, decreasing the number of low-acuity cases at Texas Children’s emergency rooms.

In addition to opening Texas Children’s Urgent Care Westgate, Texas Children’s plans to open additional pediatric urgent care clinics, primary care pediatric practices, pediatric specialty care locations and maternal-fetal medicine practices across Austin over the next five years.

“Making sure women and children have access to exceptional health care close to home is why we have hospitals in Katy and The Woodlands and nearly 80 Texas Children’s primary care and urgent care practices, specialty care centers, maternal-fetal medicine clinics and other health care locations throughout Greater Houston,” Texas Children’s President and CEO Mark A. Wallace said. “And that is why we are bringing Texas Children’s to Austin, Texas.”

Click here to read Wallace’s blog post about why Texas Children’s is moving into Austin.

Get ready, bargain hunters! Big savings on everything from AMC Theatres movie tickets and Nike sneakers to Dell computers and Walt Disney World vacations are now available on BenefitHub, the new and exclusive discounts and rewards marketplace where Texas Children’s employees can find savings on a million different products from more than 10,000 national brands and local businesses.

BenefitHub includes the familiar discounts that Texas Children’s employees already enjoy and more than 200,000 additional offers on items to accommodate every lifestyle – all in an easy-to-use, well organized and comprehensive directory that can be accessed online or via mobile device. Pay for items directly and receive concert, event and attraction tickets immediately by using your smartphone. Tickets and coupons can also be printed.

Employees can even earn 2-20 percent Cashback Rewards on nearly all of their BenefitHub purchases, with no limits on how many times the cashback can be redeemed.

“Our team is always looking for new and innovative ways to live compassionately by taking great care of our employees and offering meaningful programs that add value to their lives,” said Catherine Codispoti, vice president of Human Resources. “That’s why we are so excited to introduce BenefitHub, which gives all Texas Children’s employees convenient access to their favorite discounts and an expanded network of local and national vendors right at their fingertips.”

Visit BenefitHub to start shopping, saving, and earning rewards today! Enter Texas Children’s referral code AH5SYC and complete the sign-up with a Texas Children’s e-mail address to register for a new account.

Browse through 18 different categories for discounts on apparel, auto, beauty, cell phones, electronics, entertainment, food, health and wellness, sports and outdoors, travel and more. Shoppers can also find local deals on their BenefitHub homepage, along with shortcuts to the newest and most popular offerings on the platform.

Questions about the new discount and rewards marketplace? Support is available in both English and Spanish by contacting BenefitHub at 866-664-4621 or customercare@benefithub.com.

Texas Children’s continues to deliver on its mission of providing quality and safe care to our patients. As part of the expansion of the Maternal Fetal Medicine services at the Pavilion for Women, the obstetrics service has partnered with the Texas Children’s Kangaroo Crew to create the Maternal Transport Service.

The Kangaroo Crew transport team has decades of experience in critical care transport. To ensure expertise in high risk obstetrics care, the Kangaroo Crew and the Pavilion for Women labor and delivery (L&D) nursing staff have combined their specialized experience to create a program that supports critically ill obstetrics and gynecology patients. The team consisting of a Kangaroo Crew nurse, L&D nurse, respiratory therapist and EMT can provide specialty care not only to newborns and children, but now to mothers while enroute to the Pavilion for Women.

On December 8, 2017, Texas Children’s had its first maternal fetal transport case where a high-risk pregnant patient was transported to the Pavilion for Women from an outside hospital. The transfer call came in to Texas Children’s Mission Control, the hospital’s state-of-the-art communications hub that houses representatives from the departments of Room Management, Transport Services and Critical Care.

When a transfer call comes into the center, teams across the system work together to assure an efficient transfer occurs that provides the highest quality and safest care possible for high risk maternal patients.

“Whenever safe to do so, transporting a pregnant patient to the appropriate facility before an emergency happens is safest,” said Dr. Karin Fox, medical director of Maternal Transport. ”There is not an incubator yet made that can support an unborn baby and the mother, provided she is stable and a true emergency has not yet occurred.”

Prior to the maternal transport, meticulous collaboration took place before coordinating the patient’s successful transfer to the Pavilion for Women.

“We collaborated with our Maternal-Fetal Medicine and subspecialist teams to determine if this patient would benefit from maternal transport,” said Elizabeth Bolds, assistant clinical director at the Pavilion for Women. ”Intake assessment revealed this would be an ideal candidate for our Maternal Transport program and as such we coordinated the patient’s transfer to the Pavilion for maternal ICU care.”

The Kangaroo Crew staff – Shannon Frost RN, Heidi Allen, RRT, Nathan Martinez, EMT, along with maternal transport nurse, Khanh Nguyen, comprised the pioneering team that transported our first maternal transport.

According to Deb D’Ambrosio, RN, director of Transport Services and Mission Control, and Dr. Jeanine Graf, medical director of the Kangaroo Crew, “we had six successful transports in the first few weeks of starting the program. We anticipated this would be the volume for one month.”

By extending this transfer service beyond the hospital’s pediatric and neonatal populations to our high-risk expecting mothers, the Pavilion for Women continues to bolster its reputation as a primary referral site for patients with high-risk pregnancies.

“When the Pavilion for Women opened five years ago, it was created to care for the most complicated pregnancies and critically ill newborns, as well as serve thousands of normal deliveries each year,” said Cris Daskevich, senior vice president at the Pavilion for Women. “By working with our Kangaroo Crew and Mission Control partners, this transport service allows us to help our partners in the community transport their really sick patients to us where we can improve outcomes for mothers and babies.”

Click here to learn more about high-risk pregnancy care at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women. Click here to learn more about our Kangaroo Crew transport team.

Looking for a way to have some fun and support a great cause? Then look no further than Camp Keep Smiling, a camp for Texas Children’s patients ages 10 to 16 years old with cleft lip and palate.

Hosted by the nonprofit Camp for All, the camp in Burton provides a safe, fun environment for patients between the ages of 10 and 16 to engage in meaningful social interaction and gain self-confidence. Participants can enjoy activities like canoeing, fishing, archery, ropes courses, basketball and arts and crafts.

Texas Children’s Pediatric plastic surgeon Dr. Laura Monson, who helped start the camp, leads the initiative with other team members from the plastic surgery division. Physicians, physician assistants, nurses, OR staff and child life specialists serve as counselors who notice tremendous strides in the campers towards the end of the session.

Admission is free of charge for patients as it is supported directly by donations and the help of generous volunteers like you.

This year’s camp is scheduled for Friday, March 23, to Sunday, March 25. If you are interested in volunteering at the camp, please contact Michelle Roy at mgroy@texaschildrens.org to receive a volunteer application. Applications for patients to attend the camp are available online at this link and are due Monday, March 5.

December 20, 2017

Five-year-old Marianne Franco failed every hearing test since she was born, causing her to move through life lip reading and hearing what she could with a hearing aid. All of that recently changed when doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands turned on the cochlear implant Marianne received weeks before.

As an audiologist rang a bell, the girl gave a grin. When they continued to ask her questions, trying to gauge how much she could hear, Marianne’s mom, Lizette, whispered behind her daughter’s head.

“I hear that,” Marianne said.

“What did you hear?” her mom asked.

Marianne is not sure yet how to discern exactly what she’s hearing. She’s grown up lip reading and has been able to pick up amplified sounds through a hearing aid. However, the sounds have never been crisp or at a safe volume. That’s why her family opted for Texas Children’s physicians in The Woodlands to surgically place a cochlear implant inside her head and give her the chance to hear.

“I think she’s going to do fantastic with the implant,” said Pediatric Otolaryngologist Dr. Jill Beck, explaining that the implant in Marianne’s head is sending a wireless signal to the outside processor. The nerve that’s being exercised for the first time is so fragile they have to send very soft sounds that will gradually build with time.

Meanwhile, she has to learn what sounds to associate with words in both English and Spanish. It will be exhausting, but Marianne is willing to work hard. To understand her motivation, you have to think like a child. Minutes after her implant was on, she asked to go underwater. She’s never heard the sound of water.

“You’ve been dreaming about this right?” Lizette asked.

Beck said Marianne is one of four children at Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands to get this kind of implant. As technology gets better, she said, there’s a lot of promise that this will become a more routine procedure.

For more information about Texas Children’s cochlear implant team and the Eat & Hearing Center at Texas Children’s click here.

To watch KPRC Channel 2’s story about Marianne’s cochlear implant and reaction to hearing the world like she never has before, click here. To read a story in the Houston Chronicle about her implant, click here.