Michigan-based Corewell Health (formerly Spectrum Health), Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital, and Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services have announced three gifts totaling $50 million from the Devos family and the DeVos Family Foundation to bolster programs supporting children’s medical, rehabilitative, and mental health care throughout the state.

A $40 million gift will help expand pediatric intensive care services at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital (HDCH) in Grand Rapids to include a 12-bed inpatient medical psychiatry unit and a breast milk donation and distribution station. The funds will also bolster nursing recruitment, retention, and career development opportunities. This gift will also endow a $20 million program supporting child life specialists, music and art therapists, and teachers to offer services to children and their families while in the hospital.

In addition, the foundation made two gifts of $5 million each. One will support a collaboration between Mary Free Bed and HDCH to build a rehabilitation hospital to expand services and outpatient capacity. The other will support Grand Rapids-based Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services in its construction of a pediatric behavioral health center to provide access to care and behavioral health testing services for children and teens throughout Michigan.

“Our continued partnership… is a testament to our collective vision of ensuring children and families in our communities receive exceptional, coordinated, and compassionate care,” said Corewell Health president Tina Freese Decker.

“Mom and Dad always believed that buildings were merely platforms for people to do great things,” said Cheri DeVos, daughter Helen and Richard DeVos, co-founders of Amway, who died in 2017 and 2018, respectively. “There are many amazing things that will occur at these great medical facilities, yet we know it is really about the special people who inhabit these spaces.”

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