Letters From Our Leaders
SickKids has always been on the front lines in the fight for children’s health. This year was no different. We continued to advance paediatric care, and lay the groundwork for the future, thanks to the extraordinary dedication, talent and expertise of our people and the support of government, our community and our partners.
As a leader, SickKids has great capacity, and even greater potential to shape the future of child health. Though we’ve reached a number of victories in the fight against childhood diseases, today, we’re more focused on the battles ahead. As you’ll read about in this Annual Report, driving advances in genomics to help improve our understanding of autism; partnering with other child health institutions to deliver better care; and re-imagining our operating suites are just a few of the ways we are seeking to overcome current limitations so we can unleash our full potential.
From left: Dr. Michael Apkon, Kathleen Taylor, Rose M. Patten, Ted Garrard
A Message from Dr. Michael Apkon, President and CEO, SickKids and
Rose M. Patton, Chair, SickKids Board of Trustees
Unprecedented change is happening across health care. From the diagnostic precision of whole genome sequencing to our growing ability to harness the therapeutic potential of stem cells and the immune system, medicine today is advancing faster than we could have ever imagined. At the same time, we’re caring for more children with increasingly complex medical issues. And with improved outcomes, we are facing considerable demands on our paediatric system.
Before us is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-imagine SickKids and transform children’s health care, always with a focus on providing safe, high quality care. Over the past year we have made great strides. We are reducing preventable harm by prioritizing patient safety through our Caring Safely initiative. Caring Safely isn’t just about doing a few things differently — it is a whole new mindset that brings a range of tools and techniques to support our efforts to become a highly reliable organization.
We are working towards delivering more coordinated and connected care by working with our partners in the health system and developing the Kids Health Alliance. We are implementing a sophisticated new electronic health information system, to support seamless care within and between organizations. Our integration with The Hincks-Dellcrest Centre, now the SickKids Centre for Community Mental Health, and collaboration with partners, moves us towards a model of treating mental and physical health issues holistically. And we are laying the groundwork for a new campus that will be adaptable to new care-delivery models, technologies, diseases and patient populations that will undoubtedly change over time.
A Message from Ted Garrard, CEO, SickKids Foundation and
Kathleen Taylor, Chair, SickKids Foundation
To realize our vision for the future of child health, we’re embarking on the largest hospital fundraising campaign in Canadian health-care history. At this time of tremendous change, we need our great community to re-dedicate itself and new donors to join us, so that together we can shatter limits.
With all of us working together, we know we will be successful because we’ve done this before. In the 1940s, the hospital had outgrown its existing facility. The community raised $9 million to build what was, at that time, the biggest children’s hospital in the world.
More recently, our donors came together to help us build a 21st-century home for our Research Institute, which has already been the backdrop to ground-breaking research discoveries.
Last fall, we launched a new brand platform — SickKids VS the greatest challenges in child health — to inspire and expand our community. It represents a bold shift in tone, highlighting the ‘fierce’ side of our patients, families and staff, and the ‘fight’ that occurs at the hospital each day. The response has been overwhelming and helped deliver our most successful fundraising year ever.
"And with all of you standing with us, we’ll do it again."
We draw tremendous strength for the work ahead from our people, our community and our partners—together we have built one of the world’s great paediatric hospitals. Every year, just as we saw in this year past, we have overcome limitations to advance our vision of Healthier Children. A Better World.™
And with all of you standing with us, we’ll do it again.