Donor Story: Investing in Future Healthcare Leaders

Published on in Philanthropy Report

In 2013, when Brian D. Hanna, MDCM, an attending cardiologist and Director of the Section of Pulmonary Hypertension, and his wife, Raezelle Zinman, MDCM, an attending pulmonologist, were eyeing retirement, they started thinking about ways they could have a long-term impact on their fields of study at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). They began exploring the idea of leaving a planned gift.

When people make a planned gift to CHOP in their will, trust or by another beneficiary designation, they leave a legacy for future generations at the nation’s first children’s hospital.

A passion that lives on

Leaders in their fields who have published extensively in prominent medical journals, Zinman and Hanna are passionate about their specialties and the thousands of children they’ve treated throughout their careers. They believed the best way to continue their legacy was by investing in training new physicians, who in turn would care for countless other children and perhaps spark the next big medical breakthroughs.

After consulting with their lawyers, Zinman and Hanna updated their wills to include planned gifts to CHOP. These gifts will provide scholarship funds to first-year physician fellows in Cardiology and Pulmonology, and support the overall fellowship budgets for each division.

Long-term impact

"By supporting the fellowship fund generally, we feel it gives our divisions the flexibility to allocate our resources toward the priority at that moment in time," says Hanna.

Zinman agrees, adding, "Having the ability to attract and retain the next generations of top physicians in our fields will ensure CHOP maintains its competitive edge and that the patients we serve will continue to receive the best and most innovative approaches to care."

In December 2017, the couple retired from CHOP and began their next adventure.