Children's Hospital of Philadelphia said May 19 it received $25 million from the Wood family, who founded the convenience store chain Wawa, for its fetal treatment center.
The 25-year-old center will now be called the Richard D. Wood Jr. Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment. The funding will go toward building new clinical spaces, creating a birth defects biorepository and establishing new endowments for a pediatric surgical science distinguished chair and pediatric surgical science fellowships.
"On behalf of our entire team, I would like to express my gratitude to the Wood family on this historic gift, which will fuel a new era of breakthroughs in fetal medicine and surgery," N. Scott Adzick, MD, the center's surgeon-in-chief and director, said in a news release. "Their generous philanthropic support will allow for a major expansion of infrastructure, patient services, research, and recruitment that will categorically be pivotal to our hospital and the patients and families we serve worldwide."