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Following last year’s performance as the top fund-raising hospital team in the Boston March of Dimes Walk America, the BWH NICU Strollers are readying for a second strong showing.
Last year, about 12 NICU staff members and 40 graduate families joined forces and raised almost $10,000 for the March of Dimes, a leading national organization that fights premature births, birth defects and infant mortality. With one year under its belt, the NICU Strollers are off and running in advance of this year’s April 29 event. The walk steps off at 12:30 p.m. from the Hatch Shell in Boston.
“We’ve got about 60 walkers with team members from all over the hospital,” said Paul Hughes, the department administrator for Newborn Medicine and now a member of the March of Dimes Board of Directors. Hughes, Sandra Harmon, RN, assistant nurse manager in the NICU, and several others are captains of the BWH NICU Strollers.
This year’s team already has raised more than $11,000, and it includes membership from the Smith building, Thorn, One Brigham Circle, OB-GYN, L&D, hospital administration and elsewhere. Several physicians, including Steve Ringer, MD, and Robert Insoft, MD, who were unable to participate last year because of a conference, have joined the team, too. In addition, NICU families from the last three years have been invited to join the BWH team for a NICU reunion before and after the walk.
“Last year, several families came wearing T-shirts saying ‘Dr. (David) Acker (chief of BWH Obstetrics) is our hero,’” Hughes said.
The March of Dimes and the BWH NICU are closely aligned in caring for premature babies and their families. “It’s through the March of Dimes that we connect our families with supportive organizations such as Fragile Beginnings and the Internet Share-your-story site that is overseen by a neonatologist and nurses,” Hughes said. “The March of Dimes plays a major role in helping our families network with one another and find the support services they may need particularly after discharge.”
The BWH NICU Strollers are gaining support from another Walk America team. That team, the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., led by Jonathan White, a BWH clinical researcher in Pathology, and also on the Massachusetts Board of Directors of the March of Dimes, is building a relationship with the BWH NICU for inspiration.
“Our fraternity, the first intercollegiate fraternity for college-educated African American men, has a national partnership with the March of Dimes and a mission to promote male responsibility in the prevention of teen pregnancy, a component of which deals with the issues of prematurity in teenage births,” White said. “We’ve adopted the BWH NICU so our members can gain a greater understanding and connection with the issues of premature births and birth defects and provide support for affected families.”
To support or join the BWH NICU Strollers, contact Hughes or Harmon.