Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital are just one mile apart in Memphis, Tennessee. When St. Jude started a brain tumor program in 1985, the two hospitals began a partnership that would span decades. Today, the Pediatric Brain Tumor Program is one of the largest pediatric surgical brain tumor programs in the country. Frederick Boop, M.D., clearly recalls the foundation on which the program started.
“The agreement between the two hospitals was we would see any child the doctors wanted to bring here for care—and as long as we could, we would keep it going,” says Boop, co-director of the Neuroscience Institute and medical director of the Neurosurgical ICU at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital; professor and chairman, Department of Neurosurgery at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and chief of the division of pediatric neurosurgery at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. “And it grew from there.”’