The Southern Oregon World of Wine Festival is the premier wine event from Roseburg to Ashland, and now it is also the premier fundraising event in support of local medical care at Asante. This year, funds raised during World of Wine—which runs from August 19 to 23—will go to Children’s Miracle Network and other healthcare programs supported by Asante Foundation. The funds raised will be used to improve services at Asante.
“This is a partnership between two strong regional entities—the Southern Oregon Wine Industry and Asante Foundation,” said Floyd Harmon, executive director of the Asante Foundation.
Harmon added that the goal is to build a destination wine event that will celebrate the region’s award-winning wine industry and highlight the hospitality, natural beautiful and abundance of outdoor and cultural activities in Southern Oregon. “And, this will benefit children’s health and other important healthcare programs at Asante. The partners have committed to developing this into the region’s premier wine event over the next five to 10 years,” he said.
From its beginnings in 1954 when community leaders combined their resources to build Rogue Valley Memorial Hospital, the Asante mission has been the same: provide the best in medical care locally, funded by local dollars and operated by local leadership. Today, Asante has grown to three hospitals and has been recognized as a 15-Top Health System in the country. Without the ongoing, generous support of the community, it may not have been possible.
What does that support really do? Consider this. The Asante Foundation received donations totaling $2.5 million to bring the best in radiation therapy—known as TomoTherapy—to the Rogue Valley in 2010. To raise those dollars, Asante would have needed to provide over $250 million in patient care.
That TomoTherapy has saved lives. Take Luis Aguirre, a retired international sales and marketing manager from Jacksonville who developed prostate cancer.
“I was just devastated,” he says.
Luis was a member of the Asante Foundation Board of Directors. In an ironic twist of fate, one of the people responsible for bringing this life-saving treatment to Asante Rogue Regional was one of its first patients and today he is cancer free.
It was funds raised by the Asante Foundation and Children’s Miracle Network donors that paid for the $2.5 million expansion of the neonatal intensive care unit. Often over capacity, the unit was in danger of not meeting the needs of the region.
Katie Cascamo was in Klamath Falls when her placenta began to separate prematurely. Thankfully, the Asante Rogue Regional NICU was just a short helicopter trip away. Today, Katie and her son, Giovanni, are doing well. “Without this NICU right here in Medford, we might not be here today,” Katie says.
The Asante Foundation has raised funds from the community for many other recent projects including the remodel of the Cheney Family Place—a beautiful home where patients and families from out of town may stay when they cannot afford other lodgings, a new respite room for patients in the Behavioral Health Unit of Asante Rogue Regional, a new NICU transport unit, and ongoing support of a fund to provide mammography for low income women in Jackson and Josephine counties.
That is why the Asante Foundation is thankful to everyone that the Southern Oregon Wine Industry has partnered to help raise funds for healthcare through the World of Wine event. Everyone who enjoys World of Wine will also be helping Asante patients and their families.
For more information on Southern Oregon World of Wine, visit the website at www.worldofwinefestival.com.
