Includes Babies in Neonatal Intensive Care and Well Baby Units

		Pediatrics News Archive Featured in the Media JeffNEWS

The term taking “baby steps" will, once again, take on new meaning in September as Thomas Jefferson University Hospital sponsors the fifth annual Big Walk for Little Feet. The three-mile family fun walk raises funds for Jefferson Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit for babies born prematurely or with other difficulties as well as the hospital’s labor and delivery and postpartum units for healthy babies. The Big Walk is part of the events accompanying the annual Jefferson Hospital Philadelphia Distance Run half-marathon (13.1 miles).

Jefferson's Big Walk for Little Feet will not only promote fitness, but benefits all newborns born at, or brought to, Jefferson University Hospital. This includes those premature and otherwise fragile babies who are brought to the area's largest neonatal intensive care unit and transitional nursery where they receive state-of-the-art care they might not receive in smaller institutions.

This year the Jefferson Hospital Big Walk for Little Feet has a new course. The walk begins at 8 a.m., Sunday, Sept. 18, at Eakins Oval located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 23rd Street.

Each Big Walk walker is encouraged to collect donations from family and friends to support the care for the new babies. Donations, along with donor collection forms, should be dropped off at the Jefferson Hospital Philadelphia Distance Run Expo on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 16 and 17, at the Philadelphia Downtown Marriott at 12th and Market Streets, or on Sunday, Sept. 18, at the Big Walk tent on Eakins Oval.

Big Walkers, as well as Distance Run participants may register online, by mail or at the Big Walk tent before the walk.

The Big Walk for Little Feet registration fee is $10 and those fees are separate from the walk’s fundraising component. The fee covers only operational costs and provides a Big Walk T-shirt to all registrants.

For additional information about the Big Walk for Little Feet, log on to www.JeffersonHospital.org/pdr to download donor collection forms and register online. Or, call the Jefferson Events Hotline at 215-955-9100.