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In March 1, Brigham and Women's Hospital held its fifth anniversary celebration in Palm Beach, Florida. Joined by hundreds of supporters, hospital leaders honored BWH's seminal role in organ transplantation and outlined the goals of its upcoming $200-million fundraising campaign. They also announced two new $1-million gifts to the hospital: one from longtime donors John and Kathy Kavanagh, another from Edith and Leo Pisterino, given in honor of Chairman of Neurosurgery Peter Black, MD, PhD.
At dinner that evening, event co-hosts Elaine and Jerry Schuster welcomed to the Ritz-Carlton nearly 300 people, a record-setting crowd. The Schusters thanked their slate of volunteers and set the stage for a program that featured BWH President Jeffrey Otten; Chairman of Surgery Michael Zinner, MD; Partners HealthCare System President and CEO Samuel O. Thier, MD; Partners Board Chairman John "Jack" Connors, Jr. (who, with his wife, Eileen, was the evening's honorary co-chair); and BWH Board Chairman Michael Bell.
As slides flashed behind him on a giant screen, Michael Bell led a digital tour of the Bretholtz Center for Patients and Families and other construction plans on the horizon, including a new building. These are keystones, Bell said, of the most ambitious fundraising campaign in BWH history, which will also raise funds for research, patient care and teaching.
Taking as its theme "A tradition of excellence," the evening paid homage to the hospital's pioneering role in organ transplantation. Celebrated in a poignant film was the historic, simultaneous transplantation at BWH last year of a heart, two lungs and a kidney from a single donor to four recipients, all of whom are in successful recovery. Guests gave a standing ovation to BWH's own Joseph Murray, MD, a Nobel laureate who performed the first successful human transplant, a kidney, in 1954.
Introduced to the appreciative gathering were 38 current and former BWH clinical leaders, many of whom gave talks at a health forum open to the public the next day. They were invited to the podium by Chief of Cardiac Surgery Lawrence Cohn, MD, leader and board chairman of the Brigham and Women's Physicians Organization.