Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has announced a $25 million gift from the Wood family, which founded what became the convenience store chain Wawa, in support of the hospital's fetal medicine program.

Made in recognition of the program's twenty-fifth anniversary, the gift will establish the Richard D. Wood Jr. Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment, named for Wawa chairperson emeritus Richard D. Wood, Jr., and support the expansion of the program's clinical, educational, and research efforts, including efforts to build out clinical space for the Garbose Family Special Delivery Unit, create a birth defects biorepository, and establish endowments for a distinguished chair in pediatric surgical science and fellowships in pediatric surgical science.

Dr. George Bacon Wood was among the signers of the hospital's articles of incorporation when it was founded in 1855, and the family has long supported CHOP.

"Across eight generations and for more than one hundred and sixty-five years, the Wood family and Wawa have been invaluable partners to and champions of our hospital," said CHOP chief executive Madeline Bell. "This generous investment from the Wood family will undoubtedly help advance the translation of promising science into new therapies that will benefit our tiniest patients."

"It is a great privilege and honor to name the hospital's Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment after Richard D. Wood, Jr. On behalf of our entire team, I would like to express my gratitude to the Wood family on this historic gift, which will fuel a new era of breakthroughs in fetal medicine and surgery," said N. Scott Adzick, surgeon-in-chief and founder and director of the Richard D. Wood Jr. Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment. "Their generous philanthropic support will allow for a major expansion of infrastructure, patient services, research, and recruitment that will categorically be pivotal to our hospital and the patients and families we serve worldwide."