Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin announced today that it has completed an $8 million challenge from former Kohl’s Corp. executive and board member John Herma and his wife Susan to benefit the hospital’s Herma Heart Center.
The $16 million raised from the challenge will support research and clinical innovation focused on eradicating congenital heart defects and improving the quality of life for pediatric heart patients and their families.
The Herma family in April pledged to match gifts to Children’s Hospital up to $8 million through Dec. 30.
“Thanks to the incredible generosity of John and Susan Herma, who inspired hundreds of individuals and organizations to match their $8 million gift, we completed the challenge months ahead of our deadline,” said Peggy Troy, president and CEO of Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. “But their impact goes beyond that. The intentional and sustained gifts from the Herma family have allowed for incremental and strategic growth to Children’s heart program over the past 30 years.”
Children’s Hospital announced today that the Herma Heart Center will now be designated as the Herma Heart Institute, the first such clinical institute at the hospital. The designation requires the hospital to meet certain nationally-accepted benchmarks in clinical outcomes, patient care quality, education, philanthropy and research, the hospital said. Children’s heart program performs an average of 650 procedures annually.
Meg Brzyski Nelson, president of Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin Foundation, also announced that the hospital will continue its fundraising efforts with a new goal of raising an additional $11 million over the next five years to improve care for children with congenital heart defects.
The Herma family became involved with Children’s heart program in the late 1980s when the family’s infant daughter, Leigh, died of a complex congenital heart disease. Since then, the family has made multiple gifts in support of the program, including gifts to establish the Leigh Gabrielle Herma Endowed Chair in pediatric cardiology and help purchase cutting-edge medical devices, including an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine. In total, the family has contributed more than $25 million to the hospital.
“Today, we celebrated not only the completion of our challenge gift, but just as importantly, Children’s long-term commitment to further advancements in care and quality of life for children with congenital heart defects,” said John and Susan Herma. “When our daughter Leigh was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome 30 years ago, only 10 percent of infants with her diagnosis survived. It was the Herma Heart program that revolutionized the treatment in the 1990s through research and clinical innovation, and today Children’s continues to have the best peer reviewed published survival rates for children with this condition. Our goal is to continue these groundbreaking advancements through research and philanthropic support, and we thank everyone who has contributed to making this dream a reality.”
Earlier this year, the hospital announced that Mequon-based Nicholas Family Foundation donated $1.5 million to support an endowed chair in pediatric heart transplant and the family of late Quad/Graphics founder Harry Quadracci donated $1.2 million also in support of the challenge. The Ladish Company Foundation also recently pledged $1 million in support of the challenge.
