Kids & costumes at reunion event for UCSF intensive care nursery

By Phyllis Brown

## What:

Former patients, most of them dressed in Halloween costumes, will attend the annual celebration for “alumni” of the UCSF Children’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Nursery (NICN), where they started life as premature or otherwise fragile infants.  More than 300 former patients and their family members have been invited.

## When:

Saturday, October 20, 2007
From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

## Where:

UCSF Medical Center
Saunders Court
513 Parnassus Ave., San Francisco
(Saunders Court is the outdoor courtyard behind the Medical Sciences Building at 513 Parnassus Ave.)

## Who:

* Children who once were patients in the NICN, their parents and family members.
*  Nurses, doctors, social workers and other care providers.
*  Neonatology specialists, who can address how babies’ lives are saved and how the UCSF NICN meets the challenges of today’s most at-risk infants. This includes babies saved by surgery soon after birth and mothers and babies whose first surgery took place before the infant was born, thanks to UCSF’s pioneering Fetal Treatment Center.

## Contact:

Media interested in covering the event or arranging interviews should contact the UCSF News Office at (415) 476-2557. On the day of the event, media should contact Michelle Cathcart, RN, nurse manager for the NICN, at 925-323-2853 (cell).

One of the nation’s top children’s hospitals, UCSF Children’s Hospital creates an environment where children and their families find compassionate care at the healing edge of scientific discovery, with more than 150 experts in 50 medical specialties serving patients throughout Northern California and beyond.

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to defining health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.