A charity arm of The Players gives $3 million gift to Wolfson Children's Hospital

Beth Reese Cravey, Florida Times-Union
·4 min read
The Borowy Family Children’s Critical Care Tower at Baptist Health's Southbank campus, which opened in 2022, provided much-need space for Wolfson Children’s Hospital and a new entryway to both Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville and Wolfson.
The Borowy Family Children’s Critical Care Tower at Baptist Health's Southbank campus, which opened in 2022, provided much-need space for Wolfson Children’s Hospital and a new entryway to both Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville and Wolfson.

A charity arm of The Players Championship has donated $3 million to Wolfson Children's Hospital in Jacksonville toward a new $9.5 million inpatient behavioral health care unit.

The Players Championship Village Inc. was formed in 1987 to provide drug and alcohol treatment recovery for youth aged 13 to 17 who could not afford treatment through for-profit facilities. The gift, which was announced Wednesday, "will significantly expand our capacity to care for children and teens requiring hospitalization for serious mental health conditions," such as severe depression, psychosis and suicidal thoughts, Baptist Behavioral Health Vice President Terrie Andrews said.

"Each time we lose a precious teen or child to death by suicide, it only reinvigorates our efforts as a mental health community to enhance treatment options in the inpatient and outpatient settings and to continue to step up our collaborative work in education, outreach, prevention and intervention," she said. "This transformative gift … will help us save lives.”

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The new unit is the latest outcome of the ongoing relationship between Wolfson and its parent, Baptist Health, and The Players and its parent, The PGA Tour, Baptist CEO Michael Mayo said.

"Our entire community continues to be strengthened because of this long-time collaboration," he said. "We could not be more grateful for this significant $3 million gift … toward inpatient pediatric behavioral health care, but also for their decades of work to meet the needs of underserved teens at risk for or recovering from substance abuse addiction."

Expected to open in spring 2024, the 20-bed Behavioral Health and Wellness Unit will be in space previously occupied by the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, which relocated to the Borowy Family Children’s Critical Care Tower in 2022.

The new unit will join Wolfson's 14-bed Larry J. Freeman Behavioral Health Unit, which provides inpatient and outpatient pediatric mental health services, and an eight-bed behavioral health pod in the hospital's emergency center.

This is a rendering of a hallway at a planned 20-unit inpatient behavioral health unit at Wolfson Children's Hospital.
This is a rendering of a hallway at a planned 20-unit inpatient behavioral health unit at Wolfson Children's Hospital.

Over the next five years, pediatric emergency room visits related to mental health are expected to grow by 9% across the country, with inpatient stays expected to increase by 11%, according to Wolfson Hospital President Allegra Jaros.

"Like communities across the nation, Northeast Florida has been challenged to match limited mental health resources for children and adolescents with the overwhelming demand for this specialized type of care," Jaros said. "As a primary provider of inpatient pediatric mental health services, Wolfson … has long worked with like-minded community organizations on creative solutions to fill gaps in services where we can to support struggling families."

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Wolfson is committed to the "whole pediatric patient, both their medical and mental health needs," said Dr. Michael De La Hunt, medical director of Pediatric Inpatient Behavioral Health Services.

"In recent years, we have seen an explosion in demand for crisis mental health services, exceeding local pediatric inpatient bed capacity. These services are already underfunded," he said. The new unit "will be welcoming, comforting, innovative and state-of-the-art will help us meet a crucial and critical need."

This is a rendering of an activity room at a planned 20-unit inpatient behavioral health unit at Wolfson Children's Hospital.
This is a rendering of an activity room at a planned 20-unit inpatient behavioral health unit at Wolfson Children's Hospital.

The Village "has a long history of ensuring that young people in our community have the right foundation for success," board member Mike Hartley said. "This partnership … will have a life-changing impact for children and adolescents in need of critical behavioral health services."

Just last year, the Village gave a $2 million grant to Pace Center for Girls, the Jacksonville affiliate of nationally recognized model that provides education, counseling, training and advocacy for girls and young women. The gift funded a three-year pilot program to provide girls and their families gender-responsive, substance abuse prevention and intervention services.

This gift is the first from the Village to Wolfson, but the third from The Players, which have the hospital $1 million in 2011 and $2 million in 2016. Those gifts benefited child health, wellness and injury prevention programming at The Players Center for Child Health at Wolfson.

Wolfson is still raising funds to cover the rest of the unit's $9.5 million cost and for other behavioral health services. To donate, go to wolfsonchildrens.com/give or contact the Baptist Health Foundation at (904) 202-2919 or foundation@bmcjax.com.

bcravey@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4109

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: The Players gives $3 million for children's behavioral health unit