AdventHealth Foundation West Florida’s Starlight Gala draws heavy hitters in Tampa Bay’s business and community elite, and usually star power with its musical acts like Gavin DeGraw, in 2022, and, in 2023, the Commodores. While it’s an elegant Sunday evening and a who’s who in Tampa Bay, it’s also a major fundraising event for the health care system, which directly goes back into the community.
“With this gala, 100% of proceeds go back to all our hospitals throughout the West Florida division. And what’s really special this year, is we are funding leading edge women’s and children’s care throughout the West Florida division,” says Kristen McCall, president of the AdventHealth Foundation West Florida, adding that this year, the foundation is focused on funding expanded care to women and children.
“We have award-winning maternity care, but we also have elevated levels of care including the emergency department,” McCall explains.
In addition to health care services, AdventHealth also offers childbirth education programs, taught by its certified childbirth educators.
“We’re seeing women come in as soon as they know they’re pregnant and treating them throughout, even if, heaven forbid, they do need us for that NICU experience, we can treat mother and baby at a topnotch level and really continue to provide that ‘whole person treatment’ for mother and baby,” McCall says.
AdventHealth, a nonprofit health care organization, relies on funding to deliver the best in whole-person care. They seek to partner with community leaders who will invest in the mission to expand access to health care for everyone. Every dollar invested allows AdventHealth to recruit, and retain, the top experts in their fields of practice, invest in the latest, state-of-the-art technology and construct new facilities where consumers need better access to care.
“There have been fairly classical health disparities that have existed in the Tampa Bay area for a long time, in many cities, and they fall along the usual socioeconomic and racial lines. But there is another factor that’s happening in this area and [that’s] just immense population growth,” says Dr. Francis Nuthalapaty, a maternal fetal medicine physician and OBGYN residency program director at AdventHealth Tampa. “Now, you [have] the usual reasons for health disparities plus immense population growth and, together, they’ve created this environment where even what we might call an average person, may have difficulty accessing care.”
This is one of the contributing factors behind AdventHealth’s current focus on women and children, with those two segments of the community needing a dedicated focus to meet the need, and demand, present in the Tampa Bay community.
“A new life is precious, and it’s tiny, and we want to make sure that we treat that tiny little life as best as we can,” McCall says.
Nuthalapaty describes his interest in AdventHealth being this, the concept of “whole person care.”
“At the heart of that is recognizing the value, and worth, of every person and not just picking the ones who you think have the best profile to be the ones that you want to be your patients, but just treating everyone equally,” he says. “That is the basic philosophy where we’re starting this residency program, we want to address health disparities. We want to really embody that concept of whole person care, where anyone can come and get excellent care and eliminate those barriers.”
McCall agrees, elaborating that at the heart of the AdventHealth mission is to nurture the whole person, never turning anyone away.
It’s that community of caring that propels AdventHealth forward and, as McCall says, it needs the community to achieve their work.
“At the end of the day, we’re a community hospital. So, the community has to help us continue to move it forward. We need the community. We need to treat the community but we also need the community to help us because we’re caring for the community, for our neighbors, for our friends, for our families.”
With the theme of “Illuminating Hope,” this year’s Starlight Gala will take place on August 18, at the JW Marriott Water Street, and feature a special performance by Colbie Caillat.
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