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NEONATAL INTENSIVE CARE UNIT (NICU) BECOMES EVEN MORE ADVANCED WITH TABLETS FOR FAMILIES AND STAFF
Lukas’ Fund and Piper’s Friends have come together to create an incredible partnership benefitting future Grady Health System’s NICU babies and their families by providing medical supplies, support books, and comfortable, well-appointed sleeping, waiting, and end-of-life care rooms. Recently, they have raised funds to provide the NICU with seven (7) brand new Samsung tablets equipped with software from Your NICU Baby.
Located in the unit and family waiting rooms on easy-access rolling carts, these tablets will help to give parents peace of mind with valuable information about what their newborns are going through. The Your NICU Baby materials are available in both English and Spanish, and feature a full suite of video-based education, personal stories, insight and support for parents of newborns admitted to the NICU. Your NICU Baby is a service of The Newborn Channel, the 24/7 in-hospital TV network that has been educating parents for over 20 years.
“We wanted to make sure the items we supplied to the NICU would be something Grady staff and patients’ families would both really want and be able to use,†said Meaghan Boyd, Board of Directors member for Lukas’ Fund and co-founder of Piper’s Friends. “After testing these tablets at Grady’s NICU and hearing the staff’s overwhelming enthusiasm, we knew that this product would be a great fit to support these families in such difficult times.â€
The tablets and software will be available at Grady starting today, April 9. The software is customized to reflect the specifics of Grady’s NICU and will provide parents with their own personal code to access the material and resources. In addition to the tablets that moms and dads will use within the NICU and care rooms, an online version is also provided to allow parents the ability to share content with loved ones.
Do you have an organization or foundation that is interested in supporting Grady? There are many ways to give, and the team at Grady Health Foundation can help make your giving idea a reality. You can contact them here or donate directly using this link.
ABOUT LUKAS’ FUND AND PIPER’S FRIENDS
 Lukas’ Fund was established in 2003 in memory of Lukas Willem Bierema Ebell, the only child of Drs. Laura Bierema and Mark Ebell. Lukas was born prematurely and too small for his age on November 15, 2002 at Athens Regional Medical Center and died on December 26th, 2002 at Grady Memorial Medical Center in Atlanta. He spent his entire short life in the neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) at those two institutions. While Lukas received outstanding care at both facilities, Mark and Laura saw firsthand how great the physical, emotional, and educational needs were for infants and their families. When Lukas died, they established Lukas’ Fund to help support the needs of infants and their families in the NICU, beginning with the two hospitals that their son had stayed in.
 In January 2012, Lukas’ Fund partnered with Meaghan and Jared Boyd to create “Piper’s Friends†in honor of their daughter, Piper. Piper was born on November 3, 2011 and spent the majority of her very short life at Grady’s NICU before passing away on November 4. Consistent with Lukas’ Fund’s guiding principles, Piper’s Friends will benefit future Grady NICU babies and their families by providing medical supplies, support books, and comfortable, well-appointed sleeping, waiting, and end-of-life care rooms. Piper’s Friends, which is a “designated fund†within Lukas’ Fund, has raised $100,000 in its first two years.
To date, Lukas’ Fund and Piper’s Friends have raised more than $200,000. They have already made a number of important donations to Grady and Athens Regional Medical Center, including an interactive computer video kiosks for parent education; comfortable “Lukas’ Rooms†adjacent to the NICU where parents can sleep as they visit their infant (Grady) or room–in with their infant to prepare for the transition room (ARMC); a breast pump for nursing mother’s; educational DVDs; “Kangaroo Chairs†for nursing mothers’; and physical therapy aids and gel cushions. Lukas’ Fund and Piper’s Friends also support parents by providing meal vouchers and parking validation vouchers.
You can help Lukas’ Fund and Piper’s Friends support Grady’s NICU by participating in their upcoming Golf Tournament on April 26. Register to participate today: www.lukasfund.org/golf-tournament/!
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