DeVos Family donates $50 million to children’s hospital, rehab, mental health

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A $50 million donation from the DeVos Family Foundation will support expanding pediatric care in metro Grand Rapids, with dollars going to Corewell Health Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation and Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services.

“We are here today to celebrate the significant and impactful gift to children’s health made by the DeVos Family Foundation totaling $50 million. Thank you so much,” Corewell Health System President and CEO Tina Freese Decker said at a Monday morning event announcing the donation. “We also want to celebrate the amazing collaboration and commitment between three leading health care organizations, all focused around kids.”

The bulk of the money — $40 million — will go to the children’s hospital. It will pay to expand the pediatric intensive care unit by 14 beds to a total of 44 and back the new 12-bed blended medical psychiatric unit on track to open this spring.

“This continued support just allows us to build stronger, bigger and more programs to keep kids in West Michigan and get them the care they need locally,” Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital President Dr. Robert Fitzgerald said.

New DeVos Children’s blended unit aims to serve ‘whole child’

Half of the children’s hospital’s gift will create an endowment for the about 40-member child and family life team. It’s a group of support professionals like child life specialists, music and art therapists, and teachers “to ensure that children and families have many of the comforts of home and receive special support while in the hospital,” Corewell explained in a release.

Another portion of the money will fund a breast milk donation and distribution center for babies in neonatal intensive care. The donation will also back programs to train and recruit nurses and keep them at DeVos Children’s.

“You (the DeVos family) are helping a neonatal intensive care unit baby, born at 27 weeks, who will get the nutrition that they need to grow healthy and strong,” Fitzgerald said. “You’re helping the family who comes to the hospital every week with their medically complex child, who navigates sometimes six to eight appointments or balls in the air at a time. Our goal is to have all those organized in a facilitated, centralized clinic within our new division of comprehensive care. This innovative approach absolutely improves the experience for the family and the patient, but also has the goal of keeping kids out of the hospital and decreasing admissions.”

The Joan Secchia Children’s Rehabilitation Hospital, created by DeVos Children’s and Mary Free Bed, will get $5 million. The new hospital, which is scheduled to open in 2026, is expected to help as many as 2,500 kids each year.

Mary Free Bed President and CEO Kent Riddle said it will be among only nine similar facilities in the country.

“What we’re going to be doing is providing anybody with a physical disability, whether it is from any number of birth defects or any kind of trauma like Timmy or a disease or cancer or chronic pain, we’re going to be providing hope and freedom to try to get people back to running half-marathons,” Riddle said, referencing the recovery of Timmy Fanco of Alto after he was seriously injured in a car crash in June 2022.

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The remaining $5 million is going to Pine Rest to build its Pine Rest Pediatric Center of Behavioral Health, also expected to open in 2026. Its goal is to expand access to both inpatient and outpatient mental health care for children and teens, including specialty programs for things like eating disorders and substance abuse.

“We’re going to be able to dramatically expand the kinds of services that we have for kids with mental health issues, which are so many kids today,” Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services President and CEO Dr. Mark Eastburg said. “Not only will we expand what we currently, have but we will be able to start new programs like the pediatric psychiatric urgent care unit that just doesn’t exist anywhere in that region.”

He said anxiety, suicidal thoughts and substance abuse have increased among teens since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Parents don’t know what to do, where to turn. And when they do, they might be told, ‘Our hospital is full,’ or, ‘You’ll need to wait four months to see an outpatient psychiatrist to get your life back together again.’ How do we respond? What do we do?” Eastburg said. “Well, the DeVos vision — that total personalized care for the whole person and that patient-centered is expert — is the north star for us.”

When the new center is open, he said, “We’ll be able to say to these kids … ‘The pediatric psychiatric urgent care center is here for you. Just come in right now and we’ll figure it out.'”

State clears way for Pine Rest pediatric urgent care

DEVOS: DONATION REFLECTS PARENTS’ DREAMS

The donation stems from a list of priorities that late Amway co-founder Rich DeVos and wife Helen DeVos, whose name is on the children’s hospital, laid out in 1999.

“What you remember about them is their dreams, their passions and the things that were important to them. And it’s an honor to be able to continue on in some of those traditions, and one of them, certainly, was here at the children’s hospital,” their son, Amway Co-Chair Doug DeVos, said at the announcement event at the children’s hospital in downtown Grand Rapids. “The focus on patients, on children, and that their faith drove them to be involved in so many ways in our community and that it was part of everything that they did and they wanted to stay focused on those kids. They wanted to understand that kids needed care here, and if they had a complication or special case, that we need to develop the capabilities here by studying different areas so that we could keep families together, that we didn’t have to create distance to get the care that was needed.”

He praised cooperation among community organizations to improve care and serve more people.

“This community doesn’t compete. This community collaborates,” he said.

“You see people every day in these institutions, working and thinking and committing themselves to making that happen,” he continued. “While we spend a lot of time thinking about facilities, and you look at beautiful facilities are built, we always know it’s the people, the people inside these facilities.”

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Riddle credited Rich and Helen DeVos’ vision for creating a culture of advancement and collaboration. He thanked their family for continuing that vision.

Freese Decker said the DeVoses’ support had turned the children’s hospital into a “gem” for kids in West Michigan. Eastburg said that “gem” provided surgical care for two of his own children.

“One of my sons received highly specialized care that saved his life. What parent could repay a debt of gratitude like that?” Eastburg said to the DeVos family. “We are so grateful to you as a community.”

—News 8’s Kyle Mitchell contributed to this report.

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