Submitted by: Hoag Hospital Foundation
Written by: Mandy Marcinko
The Boldly Hoag campaign is a $300 million community investment in the future of healthcare—and an extraordinary example of what is possible when people come together around a shared philanthropic vision. Launched in 2022, this capital campaign brought together thousands of donors, alongside physicians, volunteer leaders, campaign committee members, and the Hoag team, who believed Orange County could build something extraordinary for generations to come.
That vision will become tangible on September 19 at a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the completion of the Hoag Hospital Irvine Sun Family Campus, a defining milestone in Hoag’s history. At its heart, the campaign is about the people who imagined what healthcare could become, and committed their time, resources, and expertise to make it happen.
For more than 70 years, philanthropy and community support have been part of Hoag’s story. Inspired by the spirit that helped build Hoag’s first hospital, Hoag Hospital Newport Beach, the Boldly Hoag campaign invited the community to make their mark on this new era of healthcare.
Orange County is one of the fastest-growing regions in California. Medical needs are becoming more complex, and advances in precision medicine, cancer treatment, minimally invasive surgery, and wellness are transforming what healthcare can achieve. At the same time, Hoag has become a destination for patients seeking highly specialized, innovative care, drawing people from across the region and beyond. Hoag recognized that preparing for that future would require a bold vision large enough to match the needs of a growing community—and the opportunity to expand Hoag’s impact as a premier institution for world-class care.
Through the Boldly Hoag campaign, the Hoag Hospital Foundation invited philanthropists to help shape that future and challenged the community to help bring it to life.
Thousands answered that call.
Some made transformational gifts. Others contributed at a level meaningful to them. Donors hosted fundraising and informational gatherings in their homes, while Hoag Hospital Foundation engagements brought the community together in support of the campaign through event proceeds. Panel discussions and tours of the construction site gave people opportunities to engage with the vision and see it taking shape. Corporate partners joined the effort, while physicians, volunteer leaders, campaign committee members, and the Hoag team shared the story, opened doors, and built momentum throughout the community.
Together, they turned a bold goal into action.
Designed for What Comes Next
The result is the Hoag Hospital Irvine Sun Family Campus, a healthcare environment built to meet evolving needs while advancing Hoag’s commitment to exceptional, compassionate care. The campus brings together advanced cancer care, digestive health, women’s health, and surgical capabilities, including the region’s first Cancer Urgent Care, a Comprehensive Breast Center, additional state-of-the-art operating rooms, and a hybrid operating room equipped for highly complex procedures and advanced imaging. Women and families will have access to comprehensive care, specialty birthing suites, and a Level III neonatal intensive care unit. Advanced technology, teaching, and broadcast capabilities will support collaboration and physician education in digestive health.
The campus also creates opportunities for research, clinical trials, and innovation to advance alongside patient care, supporting Hoag’s privademic model of care. Together, these capabilities have the potential to advance medicine in ways that reach far beyond the patients treated here, contributing to discoveries and innovations with impact nationally and around the world. This model brings together the agility of a private healthcare system with the research rigor of academic medicine. Across the campus, sophisticated clinical environments are complemented by gardens, walking paths, terraces, and soothing spaces designed around patients, families, and caregivers.
Philanthropy in Action
The Hoag Hospital Irvine Sun Family Campus—named in honor of philanthropists Diana and David Sun, who gave $100 million to support its development—is a significant investment in designing the future of healthcare in Orange County. It is also a testament to the thousands of donors whose generosity to Hoag helped make the vision possible.
People gave to the Boldly Hoag campaign for many different reasons. Some were grateful patients or family members who wanted to give back to the institution that had cared for them. Others were passionate about specific areas of medicine or wanted to support physicians whose clinical work they admired. Some wanted to help Hoag’s nurses and staff thrive. But at the heart of every gift was a shared desire for exceptional healthcare close to home—for their families, friends, and the broader Orange County community.
Those individual motivations became a shared philanthropic movement.
The campaign required years of partnership and extraordinary community investment. Donors gave generously and helped bring others into the vision. Physicians shared their expertise and their hopes for what the campaign could make possible. Volunteer leaders and campaign committee members advocated for the effort, made connections, and helped build momentum throughout the community. Hoag’s leadership and team members worked alongside them to carry the vision forward.
It was this collective effort that made the Boldly Hoag campaign possible.
Kenneth Chang, MD, James & Pamela Muzzy Executive Medical Director Endowed Chair in GI Cancer, Digestive Health Institute, and an internationally recognized gastroenterologist, was an important partner and ambassador for the campaign. He shared with donors and community members what their support could make possible for patients, research, and innovation.
For Dr. Chang, the new campus represents an opportunity to bring those elements together—and to elevate Hoag’s role as a nationally recognized leader in the latest advances in medicine, drawing patients seeking the most advanced care.
“This new campus really represents for me the crowning jewel of my entire life’s work, which has been driven by the guiding principle of innovation fueled by compassion,” said Dr. Chang. “We will be a window for the world. We want the world to be able to see into the newest, latest, greatest technology and innovation. We will be the light for our community.”
For Hoag breast cancer patient Nancy Fries, that vision is deeply personal.
Nancy knows firsthand the fear that comes with a cancer diagnosis—and the reassurance that comes from knowing the new Hoag Hospital Irvine Sun Family Campus will provide access to the best resources and care.
“Driving down Sand Canyon (Avenue), I saw the Irvine campus under construction, and it filled me with so much hope and promise in that moment,” Nancy said. “Seeing those buildings going up, knowing that the best technology and finest doctors were going to be providing care there, I felt this confidence that not only was I going to be okay but that the best possible care was going to be available to all of us here in Orange County.”
Her story brings the campaign back to its purpose: people. The buildings, technology, research capabilities, and services are the visible results. The achievement of the Boldly Hoag campaign is the community of people who came together to make them possible—and the patients and families, from Orange County and across the country, who will benefit from that commitment.
For Generations to Come
On September 19, the Hoag Hospital Irvine Sun Family Campus will mark the culmination of years of vision, generosity, and collective effort. Its doors will open because thousands of people believed Orange County’s future deserved an equally ambitious investment in healthcare.
The impact of that commitment will unfold over decades: in patients who receive specialized care close to home and those who travel to Hoag seeking advanced expertise; in cancer patients who gain access to clinical trials and women who find care designed around their needs. It will also be felt in the physicians who advance discoveries and the caregivers who have the resources and environment to provide exceptional care.
That is philanthropy as vision.
