ACTOR/PRODUCER JOE MANGANIELLO, WHO GREW UP IN MT. LEBANON AND IS A BOARD MEMBER FOR THE UPMC CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL FOUNDATION, IS PART OF A VIDEO THAT OPENED A CEREMONY TUESDAY, SEPT. 10, ANNOUNCING THE HOSPITAL’S LARGEST FUNDRAISER IN HISTORY. | PHOTO BY VIRGINIA LINN

UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh was in celebration mode Tuesday to announce its largest fundraising campaign ever — $200 million to expand tools and technology to advance clinical care, accelerate innovative research, elevate the patient and family experience and to address health disparities in the region.

It launched the quiet phase of this “comprehensive” campaign in 2021, according to Rachel A. Petrucelli, president of UPMC Children’s Hospital Foundation, the fundraising arm of the hospital. The campaign already has raised $147 million. She said the hospital hopes to have the additional funds committed by the summer of 2026.

“We can take pride in the fact that we are home to a children’s hospital that ranks in the nation’s Top 10,” she said at the Tuesday event. “With this reputation for excellence, comes a responsibility to raise the bar even higher.”

Children’s — the only Level One Trauma Center of its kind in Western Pennsylvania — serves 1.5 million children each year from all 50 states and 70 countries. Petrucelli said the last time the hospital launched a campaign was to help build its current $625 million facility in Lawrenceville, which opened in May 2009.

THE FUNDRAISER’S SLOGAN IS DISPLAYED IN THE ATRIUM OF UPMC CHILDREN’S. | PHOTO BY VIRGINIA LINN

Called “This Moment: Put a Child’s Future First,” the campaign is led by co-chairs Vanessa and David Morehouse, Diane and Cliff Rowe and Joan and Peter Stephans. It has created a website for the campaign: www.givetochildrens.org. The slogan makes reference to how in a single moment, everything can change for a child and their family — when there’s an injury, an unexpected diagnosis, the news that it’s time to go home or a clinical breakthrough.

Cliff Rowe, who said he and his wife, Diane, have 11 grandchildren, two of whom have health needs, said the funds would support four primary pillars. 

One is clinical excellence, which includes support for the $65 million Heart Institute being built on the hospital campus and should be up and running in early 2026. It will support research initiatives and novel gene therapies to treat Type 1 diabetes, cancer and other inflammatory diseases. 

It would also go toward “patient support, social work, outreach, things like music and art therapy programs that have been so successful and so meaningful here at the hospital,” he said.  

Also included is community health, “really important missions like behavioral health, which has become a national epidemic.”

“Why is it important now?” he asked. “The needs of our community have never been greater. Raising money through this moment will allow us to be competitive, recruit and retain the best doctors and scientists,” he said. “It will expand our services and allow us to stay a top 10 pediatric hospital nationwide.”

Diane Hupp, president of UPMC Children’s, said “Philanthropy is the engine that fuels Children’s Hospital. There is only one Children’s Hospital in Western Pennsylvania…one hospital that takes care of the sickest of the sickest day in and day out, and we are proud of that.”

LUNA DUFFY, LEFT, AND ELIZABETH LOUGHREN ARE TWO FORMER UPMC CHILDREN’S PATIENTS WHO EMCEED THE FUNDRAISING ANNOUNCEMENT EVENT. | PHOTO BY VIRGINIA LINN

Emceeing Tuesday’s event were two former patients at Children’s. Luna Duffy, 12, was diagnosed with cancer at 18 months and had to have a kidney removed. Elizabeth Loughren, 13, a few years ago was diagnosed with leukemia and received chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. In March she was able to ring the bell as a sign she was cancer free.

“The important part of UPMC Children’s is really the people and the doctors here,” Luna said. “They make you feel at home, like a part of their family.”