The Sutland/Pakula Family Newborn Critical Care Center, including the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center, was officially dedicated, Mar. 6. The ribbon cutting took place on the NICU in a ceremony attended by pediatrician Larry Pakula and his wife Sheila, members of their family, friends and Johns Hopkins Medicine leadership, including Hopkins Children’s Director George Dover, M.D., Edward D. Miller,M.D., dean and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Ronald R. Peterson, president of the Johns Hopkins Hospital/Health System and executive vice president, Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Long-time supporters of Hopkins Children’s, the family of Josephine and Frank V. Sutland, D.D.S., established an endowment to support the neonatal research of junior faculty members at Johns Hopkins, as well as construction of the Bloomberg Children’s Center’s 45-bed NICU.

An additional gift from the family established an endowed professorship in neonatology. In Sept. 2011, NICU Director Edward E. Lawson, M.D., was named the inaugural Josephine S. Sutland Professor in Newborn Medicine at Johns Hopkins. Learn more  

The Mar. 6 dedication ceremony concluded a neonatal science seminar, sponsored by the family and held in The Bloomberg Children’s Center, which opens to the public May 1. An historical first at Johns Hopkins, all of the NICU’s 45 patient rooms are private.