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January 18, 2005
Emory dedicates new $42M Children's Center

BY tia webster

December brought an early holiday gift for the children of metro Atlanta and beyond. On Wednesday, Dec. 8, Emory dedicated its new Children’s Center, a $42 million home for outpatient pediatric care and faculty research, located off Haygood Drive near the Winship Cancer Institute and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
The five-story, 153,000-square-foot building, which opened its doors to patients in September, replaced the sprawling complex of nearby one-story, modular buildings that housed the pediatrics department for many years.

“We could not be more excited by this dramatic and highly visible sign of the University’s investment in children and their health,” said Barbara Stoll, chair of pediatrics. “It is a wonderful symbol for an integrated and invigorated department. We have new clinical space, new state-of-the-art research labs and a renewed commitment to patient care.”

Stoll also serves as medical director of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) at Egleston, representing the close ties between the two institutions. Her dual appointments were announced in August, along with her being named the inaugural George W. Brumley Jr. Chair in Pediatrics.

The ground floor of the new building has 31 exam rooms, four consultation rooms and an infusion room, while the upper rooms will house faculty offices and laboratory research space.

The new pediatrics building will support a host of specialty services through the Emory Children’s Center, the largest pediatric multidisciplinary group practice in Georgia. They include apnea/sleep disorders, allergy, endocrinology/diabetes, gastroenterology, hepatology, hemophilia, infectious disease, neonatology, nephrology, neurology, pulmonology and rheumatology.

Other Emory pediatric specialties in the building include cardiology/Sibley Heart Center; hematology/oncology/AFLAC Cancer Center; and pediatric otolaryngology.

The building was designed by the architectural group S/L/A/M Collaborative and built by Turner Construction. Major benefactors included the Woodruff Foundation, AFLAC, the Francis Wood Wilson Foundation and the family of the late George Brumley, a former chair of the department.

Michael Johns, executive vice president for health affairs and CEO of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center, said the new building, like the Winship Cancer Institute, combines research and patient care in a way that symbolizes medicine in the future.

“Our vision for the future of health care at Emory is one in which the fruits of basic research are translated effectively and efficiently into clinical improvements for the benefit of patients,” Johns said. “It is a vision in which clinician-scientists span the spectrum from fundamental discovery to new treatment, and in which the very designs of our buildings—and the structure of our systems of care—support them in that calling.”

“Given the fact that we are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the School of Medicine throughout this academic year, the construction and opening of the new, bigger and better Emory Children’s Center could not be more timely,” said medical Dean Thomas Lawley. “We expect major research advances to issue from faculty working in this building in the coming years and decades.”

President Jim Wagner also joined in the Dec. 8 dedication, as did CHOA President and CEO James Tally and Emory Healthcare President and CEO John Fox.

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