Letter from the CEO and Board Chair

The Children’s Inn at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is sincerely grateful for your continued support as this unprecedented year comes to a close. Your commitment to Inn families has allowed us to persevere through the most challenging time in our 30-year history.

Thanks to you, every seriously ill child and young adult whose best chance for medical treatment was an NIH clinical research study found a nurturing “place like home” at The Inn.

As of March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NIH shifted its focus to provide in-person medical visits exclusively to those children and young adults with the most serious health issues—those whose treatment simply could not wait. As a result, The Children’s Inn at NIH served 1,100 children and families from across the United States and around the world—a number significantly lower than in previous years. The Inn’s resources, however, were needed more than ever. The dedicated Inn community has enabled our staff to keep every one of our vulnerable family members safe from the most significant public health crisis of our time. This made Inn residents’ participation possible in 537 clinical research studies conducted at the NIH Clinical Center.

With your help, we were able to distribute personal protective equipment to our families and staff in compliance with the NIH’s COVID-19 guidelines. Additionally, we were able to offer the majority of our valued services despite suspending our volunteer program, canceling in-person fundraising events, and halting our community in-kind donation dinner program. Mindful of our children’s, young adults’, and their families’ health and safety, we adjusted our activities to provide a wide variety of educational, therapeutic and recreational virtual programs.

We made sure our families received two individually packaged warm meals from local restaurants every day and gratefully accepted a multitude of lunch and dinner donations from Chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen.

During this fiscal year, crucial renovation projects were completed: we replaced our roof, windows and siding; added a 60th family overnight suite; redesigned the E-wing kitchen and replaced the cooling tower; added a beautiful outdoor cook station to our large patio and relocated our Family Programming staff to newly designed office space. The Inn also established a Hospitality Working Group to enhance our quality of care and customer service, develop more innovative programs and prioritize upgrades to resident spaces. As a result of our combined efforts, surveys revealed that 94% of our families were satisfied with their stay at The Inn.

2020 marked the 30th anniversary of The Children’s Inn at NIH. Thankfully, together, we’ve been able to overcome the pandemic’s many challenges. The annual report highlights accomplishments during the past year as well as in our three-decade history. We hope you will feel inspired by the six stories we feature in this annual report. They highlight the extraordinary resilience of our children and young adults over 30 years of innovative NIH medical breakthroughs that are transforming modern medicine to improve the health and well-being of generations to come.

The Inn’s ability to successfully respond to the effects of COVID-19 was made possible by the strength of our Inn family. Your gracious and generous support of our “place like home” inspires us to greet 2021 with hope for Inn families and hope for brighter days ahead.

Wishing you and yours a healthy and happy new year,

Jennie Lucca
CEO, The Children’s Inn at NIH

Beth Maloney
Chair, Board of Directors, The Children’s Inn at NIH