{"id":616990,"date":"2026-09-15T18:00:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T18:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/616990\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T18:00:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T18:00:14","slug":"providence-announces-1-1-billion-pledge-from-phil-and-penny-knight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/616990\/","title":{"rendered":"Providence announces $1.1 billion pledge from Phil and Penny Knight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Concept<\/p>\n

Concept drawing of the new hospital tower dedicated to women\u2019s health that will be built on the Providence St. Vincent campus in Washington County. The hospital will be made with a $1.1 billion pledge from Nike founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny Knight.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Providence St. Vincent<\/p>\n

Nike founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny Knight, have pledged $1.1 billion to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and to Providence Heart Institute, Providence announced Tuesday. <\/p>\n

The gift is pledged over a 10-year period, with the first distribution of funds this year. <\/p>\n

Providence plans to use part of the gift to build a new hospital tower dedicated to women\u2019s health on the St. Vincent campus in Washington County. The hospital, which Providence says is Oregon\u2019s first of its kind, will be anchored by an updated labor and delivery unit and neonatal intensive care unit, along with cardiac care, menopause care and gynecology. <\/p>\n

The gift will also support new cardiovascular treatments, diagnostic tools and prevention strategies at the Providence Heart Institute, also headquartered on the St. Vincent campus. <\/p>\n

In a statement provided by Providence, Knight said the gift will change what\u2019s possible for communities across Oregon. <\/p>\n

\u201cPenny and I have always believed that real breakthroughs come from people willing to take on the toughest challenges,\u201d said Phil Knight. \u201cProvidence has shown that kind of ambition in cardiovascular care, and we see the same opportunity to do something truly distinctive for women\u2019s health.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Phil and Penny Knight Pavilion on the Providence St. Vincent campus in Portland, Ore., in an undated handout image.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Providence St. Vincent <\/p>\n

The gift further cements the Knights as Oregon\u2019s leading philanthropists. <\/p>\n

Last year, they pledged $2 billion to Oregon Health & Science University\u2019s Knight Cancer Research Institute, a gift the Chronicle of Philanthropy called the largest public donation of the year. They\u2019ve also made major gifts to the University of Oregon and the 1803 Fund, an initiative investing in Oregon\u2019s Black community and neighborhoods in Portland\u2019s urban core.<\/p>\n

And it offers a major tailwind for Providence, one of Oregon\u2019s largest employers and healthcare providers. In recent years the health system, based in Renton, Washington, has weathered financial losses and a statewide nursing strike, laid off staff and closed service lines, and announced the shuttering of its insurance division. <\/p>\n

New women\u2019s hospital \u2018a dream\u2019<\/p>\n

St. Vincent is Oregon\u2019s oldest hospital, founded in 1875 by the Sisters of Providence, a Roman Catholic women\u2019s group. <\/p>\n

Today, women make up 60% of Providence\u2019s patients, and St. Vincent delivers more babies annually than any other hospital in the state. But hospital leaders say the maternity unit and NICU were built in the 1990s and have grown out of date.<\/p>\n

While the birthrate in Oregon has fallen, a higher percentage of pregnancies involve complex health conditions, from diabetes to substance-use disorders. <\/p>\n

Across the state, healthcare providers have struggled to maintain maternity wards, with closures in recent years from Seaside<\/a> to Baker City<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dr. Ray Moreno, the chief executive for Providence St. Vincent, said he and others at Providence have long discussed the idea of a women\u2019s hospital with more centralized, coordinated care and better technology to support women across their lifespan. But he said until the Knights\u2019 gift, they didn\u2019t have a path to make it happen. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat was just a dream until this incredible transformative gift,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Among the facility upgrades planned: The NICU in the new women\u2019s hospital will have private rooms for families, replacing an existing older design featuring a single shared room with a long row of specialized incubators called isolates. <\/p>\n

\"Ray\"Dan<\/p>\n

First image: Ray Moreno, M.D., chief executive of Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, in an undated handout photo. Second image: Dan Oseran, M.D., executive medical director of the Providence Heart Institute, in this undated, handout image. <\/p>\n

First image: James Colhoff Jr. Second image: Chris Hornbecker.<\/p>\n

Goal to make cutting-edge heart healthcare \u2018easier\u2019<\/p>\n

Over the past decade, the Knights have contributed $200 million to the Providence Heart Institute, helping to expand it and establish a heart transplantation program. The institute treats about 63,000 patients from across the Northwest. <\/p>\n

Dan Oseran, the institute\u2019s executive medical director, said their new pledge will allow them to recruit top talent from around the country, invest in research like clinical trials and stay at the cutting edge of diagnostics and treatment. <\/p>\n

\u201cWith this type of gift over a period of time, we can not only keep up with technology, but sort of anticipate where technology is going,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Oseran said he expects the gift will also ease the way of patients dealing with a stressful cardiac diagnosis. For individual patients, the investments in technology could mean shorter waits for an MRI or CT scan. Providence says it will also invest in some patient support services that go beyond what can be billed to insurance providers. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s a lot that we can do if we are thoughtful about how individual patients encounter the health system and how we can just make it easier for them,\u201d Oseran said. <\/p>\n

The Knights\u2019 family foundation reported $4.47 billion in assets and $520 million in revenue in 2024, according to the most recent public filings with Oregon\u2019s Department of Justice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Concept drawing of the new hospital tower dedicated to women\u2019s health that will be built on the Providence…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,279101,521,85,46],"class_list":["post-616990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-health-business-oregon","tag-healthcare","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}