Health Grants to Benefit Local Services

The office of Congressman Chaka Fattah announced last week that local health programs, including Germantown’s Covenant House, will receive grant money from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia will receive close to $2 million, which is the first installment of a grant that will total nearly $8 million, for a pediatric care measuring and testing program. The hospital will be pooling data from numerous children’s hospitals to measure quality of care and identify best practices in pediatric care.

The hospital is one of only five recipients nationally of the grant. According to a press release, Congressman Fattah was a leading advocate for the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009, under which the CHOP program is funded.

In addition, University of Pennsylvania is receiving more than $300,000 for training in pulmonary immunology and lung diseases research and the Covenant House, in Germantown, will receive $326,074 to continue to provide primary healthcare services for community members in Northwest Philadelphia from pre-natal to geriatric. According to a press release, additional funding for Covenant House is expected through 2015.