YOU ARE HERE:      Home > Community Engagement
Healthy Beginnings Help for Those in Need - Whereever They are
In Arizona, we provide more charity care than any other hospital system, helping the many people who work for a living but who don’t have health insurance.

In 2006 and 2007, Banner Health provided $130 million in charity-care treatment given without the expectation of being paid.

At our largest Banner Health facilities, Spanish-language-only patients can be assured that a trained medical interpreter will help them understand what they are facing medically, and explain all the options they have. This essential translation service is free.

In 2007, Banner Health’s $2 million contribution supporting Sunrise Community Health Center in Colorado allowed the community to open a clinic that provides primary and preventive health care services to 30,000 patients in Northern Colorado. Our Sterling Regional MedCenter in Colorado provides free mammograms to those with limited or no insurance.

Banner Health runs Arizona’s largest Poison Control Center, a free 24-hour hotline that has eased the minds of thousands of patients and saved millions of dollars in emergency room costs.

Banner Health realizes how communities could be affected by a shortage of physicians and is investing $5 million a year training physicians at our Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center and North Colorado Medical Center.
A baby born weighing less than 5 pounds, 8 ounces faces a higher risk of dying, being chronically sick or having developmental problems. In response to a community need for prenatal care in Loveland, Colo., Banner Health runs the McKee Healthy Beginnings program for families with little or no health insurance.

Established in 1991, the program offers education and support to more than 250 women a year. Some Healthy Beginnings clients are young women who are encouraged to go back to school once their babies are safely born. Other participants are older women, some of whom have been laid off from their jobs and find themselves suddenly without insurance or resources. Healthy Beginnings now offers men’s counseling as well, because we know that a well-prepared father can give unlimited help and hope to a child.
Good Neighbors for Good Health
School Based Clinics
Here and now, Banner Health makes a difference in our communities by being a powerful advocate to create and maintain strong, healthy neighborhoods. We are engaged in our communities. We not only encourage people to come to us for preventive care, but we also bring health care information to where our neighbors are—in schools and malls and at community events.

At Banner Thunderbird Medical Center, more than 3,000 people routinely come to the annual Children’s Safety Fair, which has grown from just a few booths to a large-scale community event. Kids get free bicycle helmets and parents get tips on how to keep their children safe. At our Fairbanks Denali Center, staff members hold a Valentine’s Day dinner for nursing home residents. Employees come in on their day off just to make sure that each resident has a "date" for the party.
Our school-based clinics program is anexample of Banner Health at its finest: taking our medical knowledge into our neighborhoods to protect our communities’ treasure, our children.

A team of six Banner Health professionals provides free care to nearly 3,000 children a year in 96 Phoenix-area elementary schools. Children visit the clinics for concerns ranging from earaches to a baffling neurological condition stemming from strep throat. If a child comes in for something as routine as pinkeye, a Banner Health nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant uses it as a way to talk with the family about the child’s more chronic conditions such as asthma or obesity. Through this approach, the clinic in the school becomes the child’s medical home.

The well-established clinics are reassuring to both parents and children. In some cases, the parents trust the Banner Health professional so much that they will wait to have their child seen at the clinic rather than go someplace else for free care.

For many low-income children and their families, having the free Banner Health clinic at their school makes school an even more essential part of their lives.
Here and now, Banner Health makes a difference in our communities by serving our most vulnerable citizens.
A team from Banner Behavioral Health Hospital-Scottsdale regularly goes into schools to talk with kids about substance abuse or teenage dating violence. The team is working with area high school students to help teens produce articles and videos about important behavioral health issues for kids their age.

Banner Health goes into neighborhoods to provide health screenings. Every month, four Arizona Banner Health hospitals donate as many as 1,400 screenings for common health problems such as high blood pressure or diabetes. Banner Community Hospital in Torrington, Wyo., recently gave out 300 free flu shots.

For the fifth year in a row, Banner Health was recognized as the top fundraising team for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. Banner Health provides similar strong support for the American Heart Association’s Heart Walk, Legs for Life, Alzheimer’s Memory Walk and the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life.

Our employees get involved as individuals as well. Staff members at Ogallala Community Hospital recycle cans, bake goodies, make luminarias and hold garage sales to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Banner Children’s Hospital employees cycle as a team to raise money and awareness for pediatric issues. And staff at Sterling Regional MedCenter participated in the Logan County Fair & Rodeo’s Tough Enough to Wear Pink campaign, which raised enough money to provide free mammograms to more than 30 local women.
Arts and Alzheimer's
Poison Control Center Saves Lives -
and Money
Your toddler just put some cleanser into
her mouth. Or your elderly father thinks he may have taken too much of ...

Read more
Can exposure to the arts stimulate the brain of an Alzheimer’s patient? Can it improve the quality of life for the caregiver? These are some of the questions Banner Alzheimer’s Institute is seeking to answer with the Arts Engagement Program, an innovative study designed to measure the benefits of the arts for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and their care partners.

The program is a collaboration between Banner Alzheimer’s Institute and prestigious Phoenix-based arts organizations including the Maricopa Partnership for Arts and Culture, Phoenix Art Museum, The Phoenix Symphony and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Participants attend events at the selected venues, then discuss the experience with the program’s specially trained staff. Researchers will collect data from the participants to measure the program’s impact on daily functioning, quality of life, and community engagement and participation.
Banner Wheelchair Suns
For 20 years, Banner Health, along with the Phoenix Suns, has been a proud sponsor of the Banner Wheelchair Suns, an extraordinarily successful team....

Read more
Donors Who Make a Difference
Banner Health could not provide excellent care to its patients or communities without the generous spirit of the people who donate time and money to our nonprofit organization. All contributions to our Foundations are reinvested locally and used to construct buildings, purchase state-of-the-art equipment, and underwrite programs and services that make our neighborhoods healthier and stronger.

In Arizona, the Banner Health Foundation recently contributed $1.8 million to purchase a Cyclotron, a particle accelerator used to advance patient care at Banner Health and support research at Banner Alzheimer’s Institute. This contribution follows a $3.9 million grant made in 2007 to support two major Banner Health initiatives regarding patient care and creating a strong workforce. At McKee Medical Center, the Foundation has provided $23.5 million since its beginning in 1984 to improve medical care and give comfort to patients and their families. In 2007, the Foundation raised $880,000 for improvements to the hospital’s Breast Center. In Wyoming, the Community Health Care Foundation bought new furniture for the 25-bed hospital in Torrington.

Each year, thousands of people serve as Banner Health volunteers fulfilling local community needs by helping people in emergencies, providing blood, and organizing programs for seniors and youths. Volunteers come from all walks of life and are inspired by our mission to help provide excellent patient care to their neighbors and strangers alike.