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The Mario Lemieux Foundation was created in 1993 by hockey legend Mario Lemieux. In that year, Mario was enjoying the greatest season of his brilliant career and on pace to establish a new NHL scoring record. Then he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease.
After a successful battle with Hodgkin's, Mario is now cancer free and his experience led him to focus on ways to assist those not so fortunate. He devotes much of his time to the Foundation raising funds to help reach the ultimate goal: a cure for cancer.
The main objective of the Mario Lemieux Foundation is to fund promising medical research projects being conducted by talented scientists. Among the donations made by the Foundation was a five million dollar gift to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to establish the Mario Lemieux Centers for Patient Care and Research in 2001 and a two million dollar gift to the Children's Home of Pittsburgh in 2005.
In addition to the Foundation’s research projects, the Playroom Project initiative was established following Nathalie and Mario Lemieux's personal experience while caring for their profoundly premature infant son at Magee-Women’s Hospital. It was then that Nathalie devised the idea to someday raise funds for playrooms at area hospitals in western Pennsylvania. The Playroom Project seeks to benefit families and improve the quality of a child's hospital experience whether as a visitor or patient.In 2008, a gift of $1.6 million to The Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC established The Mario Lemieux Children’s Foundation Endowment for Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Research. The gift also provided funding for two playrooms: an Austin’s Playroom in the newly constructed hospital located on the sixth floor; and a second playroom, The Lemieux Sibling Center, located in the main lobby, which is dedicated to patient siblings and offers extended hours. For more information about the Mario Lemieux Foundation and its projects, please visit www.mariolemieux.org.
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