(Providence, RI) – Women & Infants Hospital is giving thanks this holiday to Sentec and Cigna Healthcare who are helping families in our Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) celebrate Thanksgiving with the generous donation of baby caps and meals. Friday, November 17 is World Prematurity Day and November is Prematurity Awareness Month.
“It is hard to have a baby in the NICU, especially during the holidays. Something as simple as the gift of a cozy hat and a special meal prepared just for them can make all the difference for our families,” Jack Tanner, BSN, RN, Nurse Director of the NICU and Respiratory Care at Women & Infants Hospital.
For our families who will spend the holiday in the hospital’s NICU, Sentec is providing warm Thanksgiving meals, prepared by Russ Morin Fine Catering and Events, along with desserts for the NICU staff working on Thanksgiving. Sentec is headquartered in Lincoln and considers Women & Infants their “hometown hospital”. They hope these delicious meals give the families a taste of home on this special day as well as on Christmas.
A group of Cigna Healthcare employees started A Common Thread as a community service project to knit or crochet baby caps to provide warmth for babies facing serious health challenges. Since the group started, more than 25,000 baby hats have been donated to NICUs throughout the country, including 700 caps being donated to the Women & Infants Hospital NICU.
These generous donations will certainly go a long way in helping the 62 babies currently in our unit and their families celebrate a holiday to remember.
About Women & Infants Hospital
Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, a Care New England hospital, is one of the nation’s leading specialty hospitals for women and newborns. A major teaching affiliate of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University for obstetrics, gynecology, and newborn pediatrics, as well as a number of specialized programs in women’s medicine, Women & Infants is the ninth-largest stand-alone obstetrical service in the country and the largest in New England with approximately 8,700 deliveries per year. Women & Infants is a Designated Baby-Friendly® USA hospital, a U.S.News & World Report 2014-15 Best Children’s Hospital in Neonatology, and a 2014 Leapfrog Top Hospital. The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology ranked number 11 in U.S. News & World Report’s 2019 Best Medical Schools specialty ranking.
Women & Infants has been designated as a Breast Imaging Center of Excellence by the American College of Radiography; a Center of Excellence in Minimally Invasive Gynecology; Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence in Perinatal Biology and in Reproductive Health by the National Institutes of Health (NIH); and a Neonatal Resource Services Center of Excellence. It is one of the largest and most prestigious research facilities in high-risk and normal obstetrics, gynecology, and newborn pediatrics in the nation, and is a member of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units Network, Neonatal Research Network, and Pelvic Floors Disorders Network, as well as the National Cancer Institute’s Gynecologic Oncology Group.
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