March 16, 2022

Every day, thousands of babies are born too soon, too small and often very sick. The mission of March of Dimes is to improve the health of mothers and babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality.

We can change that!

We encourage every Department to form a team to walk, celebrate and raise money and awareness. Let’s come together to fight for the health of moms and babies, and serve our community in true Texas Children’s style!

This year’s Live MARCH for BABIES walk is Sunday April 24, 2022

March for Babies energizes people nationwide to unite, connect and fight for the health of every family. As we race to the event, our amazing MOD Team Captains will be planning some fun fundraising events (within our socially distancing guidelines of course). If you’re not yet part of a Texas Children’s Team, please join one of our teams here.

Team captains can access materials at the Team Captain Self Serve Depot in the Pavilion for Women administrative suite on Legacy Tower 3.

Ready to participate?

Online registration is as quick and easy as the Texas Two Step.

Step 1:

Register with the MOD. This is free and allows your teams to be seen together and use social media to fundraise!

  • Register online with your TCH March of Dimes Team: https://www.marchforbabies.org/Registration/Jointeam? Put in “TCH” and search for your team name.
  • Share your TCH team with family and friends and social media!
  • Or, simply make a secure donation to any TCH team via the MOD site.

Step 2:
Use our TCH Payroll Deduction Form to register for our TCH March for Babies event. Registration includes your TCH T-SHIRT and our MOD walk party!

  • Complete the Texas Children’s Hospital’s Payroll Deduction form to register
  • Blue Jeans for Babies (BJB) for March and April: $20 a month to wear work appropriate blue jeans to support MOD every Friday
  • Once registered for BJB, please print your receipt to receive your 2022 Blue Jeans for Babies button from your Team Captain
  • Online registration for our March for Babies Houston event: $25 for your TCH T-Shirt, event day activities, and lunch.
  • Online registration for our March for Babies Montgomery/Ft. Bend event: $20 for your TCH T-Shirt and event day activities.
  • Or, simply make a donation via the TCH Payroll Deduction process

Thank you for your participation. We look forward to seeing you on Live Walk Day!

November 9, 2021

Thanks to the generosity of more than 300 philanthropy-minded golfers cheered on by our NICU nurses and volunteers and clad in the funkiest pants they could find, Texas Children’s now has an additional $400,000 to support the premature and critically ill babies in our care.

The money was raised at the 23rd annual RBC Bad Pants Open, a golf tournament that has generated more than $7 million in charitable donations since 1996 to enhance innovation and excellence in research, treatment and care of infants in Texas Children’s Newborn Center. The funds from this year’s event will also be used to hire an additional social worker to serve our patients and their families.

Adeline Stephen, a NICU nurse based at the Medical Center campus, was honored with the RBC Bad Pants Nurse of the Year Award for exceptional dedication and delivery of care.

“The great support we receive annually from the RBC Bad Pants Open is extremely inspiring to the entire Texas Children’s NICU team who work tirelessly to ensure brighter futures for our youngest patients,” said Dr. Kristina M. Reber, Chief of Neonatology. “The golfers and donors who support this remarkable tournament help us provide resources that are used to support our NICU families during a very stressful time, and we are truly grateful.”

Texas Children’s NICU is one of the largest of its kind in the country, and the first in the state to earn the Level IV designation that signals our ability to provide the highest level of care available. More than 1,900 babies are admitted to Texas Children’s each year, and more than 900 newborns receive care in the NICU.

For the Fuselier family, whose story was highlighted as part of the tournament, the journey through the Newborn Center started even before their son David as born. Diagnosed with a rare defect that caused a disconnection between his esophagus and stomach, David spent seven months at Texas Children’s – during which he had multiple surgeries and received state-of-the-art medical treatment from our highly specialized physicians.

“The NICU is a very sobering experience,” said Stacey Fuselier, David’s mom. “My nurses became my family and my saving grace. I can’t say enough good things about them. Our journey was a difficult one, but I never doubted we’d found the right care team. Even on the tough days, I was thankful that our baby could get better in a place as exceptional as Texas Children’s Newborn Center.”

For more from the tournament – including remarks from longtime NICU advocate and committee member Les Fox, whose now-adult twin daughters had an extended stay after being born 12 weeks early – click here.

August 24, 2020

2020 has been an unprecedented year filled with many challenges. We’ve engaged in social distancing practices like we have never done before. We are wearing protective face masks, both at work and in public, in an effort to protect ourselves, each other, and prevent the further spread of the coronavirus.

But despite the uncertainty and daily disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, this health crisis has prompted our physicians, nurses and other patient care staff to explore innovative, non-traditional approaches to patient care processes – like e-rounding – to enhance the provider/patient experience.

Daily patient rounding has been around for centuries, and is an important part of the patient care process. Before COVID-19, a group of multidisciplinary staff would gather in or outside a patient room to discuss the patient’s condition and plan of care with the patient’s family, taking into account the experience, concerns, questions and needs of the patient. Through this multidisciplinary, family-centered approach, each team member would then contribute their expertise to support the best possible care/outcomes for the patient.

To adapt to COVID-19 and to ensure social distancing practices are followed, our critical care teams began conducting patient e-rounding in April, which has been a beneficial change from the norm.

“E-rounding has been a big change for us,” said Dr. Jordana Goldman, attending physician in Critical Care. “Rounds are as old as time in medicine and so it takes a little bit of practice to get use to it. But once you get the flow of it, it really works well. Our physician and nursing leaders, and the e-Health and IS teams have been very supportive in helping us leverage new technology to make e-rounding possible.”

Through the VidyoConnect platform, virtual “rooms” are created that are then available for all rounding team members to join. During e-rounding, an attending physician, bedside nurse and family member, can be outside the patient’s room in front of a computer screen while maintaining social distancing, and can communicate virtually with remote team members including our consultants, the provider team (consisting of APPs, fellows and residents) dietitian, pharmacy, Respiratory Therapy support and other members.

“We facilitated the implementation of e-rounding by working with Dr. Goldman and Dr. Aarti Bavare to integrate their ideal workflow using the software and hardware that we already had available,” said Dr. Robert Ball, medical director of e-Health. “It was the team work of Information Services, e-Health and the physician champions that made it a reality. When you have amazing innovators in every corner of our organization working together to enhance this process, there are no obstacles that cannot be overcome.”

Since e-rounding was first introduced in the PICU and CICU in April, e-rounding has expanded to other parts of the hospital including the acute care cardiology floor. PHM has been working on the acute care side on a version of e-rounds to help with the education of the residents and medical students. Plans are underway to expand e-rounding capabilities to the Pavilion for Women and NICUs with the option of e-rounding being made available to all inpatient areas at our three hospital campuses in the coming weeks.

Our e-Health teams are also working on the ability to leverage VidyoConnect to communicate with families in a HIPAA compliant way so they can join rounds when they are not able to be at the bedside.

“The disruption of COVID-19 has allowed us to take a closer look at our rounding practices and see how we can improve them for our patients, team, learners and consultants,” Goldman said. “This is a very new process for us, but our team’s willingness to engage in this novel approach has been pretty phenomenal.”

June 29, 2020

The rapid spread of COVID-19 has resulted in more than 4 million cases worldwide. The disease has a marked preference for adults with children being relatively spared. Understanding this preference might hold the key to the identification of therapeutic targets and is the topic of a paper Texas Children’s, Baylor College of Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center and University of Texas McGovern Medical School physicians recently published in The American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology.

The paper suggests differences in lung physiology and immune function as possible reasons why children are often spared from severe illness associated with SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The number of children under the age of 18 infected with SARS-CoV-2 has been found to be considerably lower than adults. Early reports from China and Italy have shown that children who become infected with the virus show symptoms less often than adults and even when they are symptomatic, are less likely to develop respiratory symptoms such as a cough or shortness of breath. In most cases, the infected under-18 population does not become as severely ill as their older counterparts. The newly identified multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) associated with COVID-19, though serious, affects only about 1 percent of young people exposed to SARS-CoV-2.

“These profoundly decreased rates of symptomatic infection, hospitalization and death are well beyond statistical significance, require further examination and may hold the key to identifying therapeutic agents,” said the paper’s lead author, Texas Children’s Neonatologist Dr. Krithika Lingappan.

The way the SARS-CoV-2 virus enters the body and the state of the immune system itself are thought to be two primary differences in how children and adults become infected with the novel coronarvirus.

SARS-CoV-2 enters the body by binding to angiotensin converting enzyme-2 (ACE2), an enzyme that is attached to the outer surface of cells in the lungs, arteries, heart and other organs. This interaction is analogous to the virus unlocking the door to a cell. The higher the expression of ACE2 in the body, the more likely the virus will get in.

Studies have found that expression of ACE2 in the lungs increases with age. Infants and very young children have very low ACE2 expression, and older children still have lower expression than adults. Research suggests that children may be protected from the serious respiratory components of COVID-19 — including acute respiratory distress syndrome — due to their reduced ACE2 expression.

The immune system also plays a role in the novel coronavirus infection. Heightened immune response is often a factor in the inflammatory “cytokine storm” phase of COVID-19, in which the body attacks itself. Studies have found that CD4+ fighter cells in the immune system play an important role in limiting replication of the virus and that adults with moderate-to-severe COVID-19 had lower levels of CD4+ and CD8+ cells. Lung tissue in children naturally has a higher concentration of regulator T-cells, which may protect against severe COVID-19 by suppressing the immune response that, in adults, may lead to a cytokine storm.

“Selective, age-associated mortality render[s] COVID-19 a unique, infectious disease,” said Texas Children’s Neonatologist and Dr. Jonathan Davies, another author of the paper. “Insights into age-related variability in pathophysiological processes may offer critical observations, revealing focused paths of therapeutic investigation.”

Davies and Lingappan both said multidisciplinary collaboration between physicians and scientists, engaged in both pediatric and adult pursuits, holds significant promise and should be encouraged.

Click here to read the full article, “Understanding the age divide in COVID-19: Why are children overwhelmingly spared?”

Authors of the paper are:

Dr. Krithika Lingappan, Texas Children’s and Baylor College of Medicine
Dr. Harry Karimouty-Quintana, University of Texas Health Science Center
Dr. Jonathan Davies, Texas Children’s and Baylor College of Medicine
Dr. Bindu Akkanti, University of Texas Health Science Center
Dr. Matthew Harting, University of Texas Health Science Center

December 15, 2019

Patients and their families in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women received a special visit from Santa Claus last week.

Dressed in his holiday best, Old Saint Nick brought some holiday spirit to families whose babies are in the NICU this time of year. Texas Children’s Hospital’s NICU is the largest in the nation and provides level IV care, the highest level available for premature and critically-ill newborns.

Santa’s visit was hosted by the Newborn Center Family Advisory Committee and First Memories Texas, a volunteer organization dedicated to helping families whose infants are in the NICU and CVICU at Texas Children’s celebrate, honor and tell their children’s stories through photography and album-making.

November 26, 2019

As part of Prematurity Awareness Month in November, the March of Dimes activated “Operation NICU Parent Support” at Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands, delivering 25 care packages to parents of babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

“Most parents of NICU babies are not prepared for their newborn to be in the NICU,” said March of Dimes Development Manager Christine Chapman. “The March of Dimes wanted to make sure that they have what they need so they can spend time watching over their little one.”

Throughout the month, the organization gathered and delivered care packages that volunteers helped stock and organize for the NICU in The Woodlands. Almost 10 percent of the babies born last year in Montgomery County, where The Woodlands is located, were premature. About one in 10 infants nationwide are born before their 37th week.

“We are extremely appreciative of the support the March of Dimes provides the NICU here in The Woodlands,” said Susan Romero, assistant director of the NICU in The Woodlands. “It enhances the experience of families that are going through a lot.”