Tehran Shrine Kids Day newspaper

By kidshealthkit.com
You might know the Shriners for driving mini Tin Lizzies, performing as clowns and wearing fezzes. But their mission is serious. They fund and operate 22 free hospitals for children in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Here in the Central Valley, we're fortunate to have a Shriners hospital as close as Sacramento. It's the flagship of the system -- the only one providing care in four specialties: burns, spinal cord injuries, orthopaedic conditions and cleft lips and palates.

When disaster strikes -- such as last year's day-care center fire in Hermosillo, Mexico -- victims often are rushed to a Shriners hospital, where doctors save lives and do amazing things to help children recover from horrific injuries.

But the Shriners also reach out into local communities to identify children who would benefit from treatment. The first of two local screening clinics is Saturday morning at the Fresno Shrine Center on East Olive Avenue.

Despite soaring health costs and the recession's ravaging of their endowment, the Shriners have kept a pledge to provide free care to children until they are 18 regardless of a family's ability to pay. But, for the first time, Shriners hospitals are helping their bottom line by accepting insurance payments."Good things are happening in hard times," says Ted Marsella, a Fresno Tehran Shrine member who serves on the Sacramento hospital's board of governors. "Our system has stabilized."

A year ago, the Shriners feared that they might have to close six hospitals totaling 225 beds to shave costs. But the charity's 1,300 governors rejected the proposal.

The 80-bed Sacramento hospital wasn't on the chopping block and, in fact, it has expanded both patient services and its collaboration with the University of California at Davis Health System. This summer, the hospital and university teamed to start a burn fellowship program for physicians from Mexico.

Marsella says the hospital and medical school also are researching how to treat shoulder nerves that sometimes are severed when forceps are used during delivery: "The research has been phenomenal."

Shriners and their partners throughout the country fundraise in support of the hospitals. Marsella credits the success of the annual Kids Day newspaper sales in Fresno benefitting Children's Hospital Central California with convincing the Shriners to start a Kids Day of their own. The Sacramento version has raised more than $1 million. Marsella encourages anyone who has a child needing care to attend an upcoming screening. "It's amazing what we're doing for children," he says.