Residents of Southwest Florida are known far and wide for their philanthropic endeavors; their willingness to give to causes close to their hearts; their desire to invest in the future of not only their corners of the community but the community as a whole.

In the health care arena, this level of giving ensures provisions for future residents, and also provides world-class care right here, where we call home. It’s an investment that keeps the region growing, and reduces the need to travel for elevated care.

More than 30 years ago, Joanne Wyss and her Swiss-born husband, Karl, began spending more time in Southwest Florida. She, a longtime communications executive with McKinsey Consulting in New York, and he, a retired business executive, had also lived in Zurich and London before they decided to call Naples home.

Karl suffered from heart disease, and after surviving multiple life-threatening scares, the Wysses became personally motivated to invest in the future of health care, specifically heart, stroke and vascular care. This dedication resulted in committing more than $3.5 million—so far—to the Naples Comprehensive Health capital campaign for its heart, stroke and vascular center.

Joanne Wyss credits NCH for saving Karl’s life on “a number of occasions”—and, she says, “We wanted to make sure that people could continue to get first-class treatment here in Naples.”

Karl fell victim to heart disease and died in 2022, but Joanne continued her dedication to ensuring the best possible care is available for all residents of Southwest Florida, and giving people the confidence to settle here with the assurance of outstanding health care as they age in place.

“It used to be that many people, if they had some serious illness or were facing a very challenging health situation, would go back up north to Mayo Clinic or wherever they had come from,” Wyss says. “But increasingly, as the quality of health care has improved, people have their primary care here—and they want to make sure that health care is as advanced and state-of-the-art as it can be.”

Wyss is not alone in her story.

Julia Van Domelen, who serves on the board of the Naples Children and Education Foundation, said she sees high-quality health care as one aspect of community that can help attract and retain new residents, as well as keep the community thriving economically.

Van Domelen and her late husband, Bill, a retired entrepreneur who died in 2015, focused their philanthropic efforts three ways: health care, housing and education, shifting the focus each year to where there appeared the greatest need. “But health care is so badly needed, in particular in Collier County,” Van Domelen says, “because our demographics have changed so drastically.”

Through the Bill and Julia Van Domelen Foundation, help is made available to those most injured by the pains of poverty. And organizations such as Healthcare Network and NCH are among those where Van Domelen said she feels she can make the greatest difference.

As for other health care priorities, Van Domelen says, “we’re not done.”

To date, the foundation has given more than $22 million to NCH programs, including women and children’s health, and heart and stroke care. The foundation provided seed money for NCH to bring the OB Hospitalist Group to Collier County, ensuring that every patient in need of emergency OB services is seen immediately, regardless of time of day or their physician association.

“I think if you’re a young professional and you’re a bright mind, with children, you want good health care and good education systems,” she says. “If we want to attract the best and brightest, we need to have top-notch health care, education and housing.”

Van Domelen’s plans moving forward include a continued push for more pediatric care. “I’m very up front about it; I want the very best for my southern hometown.”

The tremendous need in a community with such wide economic disparity is among the chief reasons John Costigan and his wife, Emily, fuel philanthropic efforts through a donor-advised fund at Collier Community Foundation.

“Organizations like Neighborhood Health Clinic fill an important need, providing free health care for people who are working as hard as they can, but they simply can’t cover their insurance needs,” says Costigan, a CCF board member emeritus.

Among the many draws to Neighborhood Health Clinic is its medical staff being 100% volunteers. “When an organization is willing to volunteer their time to help people, you know that they are really committed to it, and they’re going to put their heart into it, as well as their time,” Costigan says.

Major philanthropic gifts such as these promise a better future for the health care landscape of Southwest Florida. With donors investing in hospital systems and clinics that have goals of providing world-class care to residents across all economic strata, it becomes clear that health care philanthropy is an investment in the overall future of the community.

Growth Close to Home

Both Naples-based health care systems—NCH and Healthcare Network—have seen rapid expansion in facilities and services thanks to transformative philanthropic gifts, and the Neighborhood Health Clinic, which is funded 100% by philanthropy, has almost tripled in size since 2017.

For Naples Comprehensive Health, four lead gifts of $20 million each have been received since 2022 in support of the upcoming orthopedic Hospital for Special Surgery (Patty and Jay Baker), the NCH Wingard Stroke Institute (Don and Diana Wingard), the NCH Rooney Heart Institute (Francis and Kathleen Rooney) and the R.M. Schulze Family Cardiovascular and Stroke Critical Care Center (Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation). The system’s largest capital campaign to date is ongoing to raise the remaining funds for each project.

NCH President and CEO Paul Hiltz said the health care system has high aspirations to be “at the top” in the country, and he thinks that lends a level of excitement toward giving, despite the rate of hospitals closing across the country.

“Here in Naples, we’re bringing in the world’s No. 1 orthopedic partner and will be opening that hospital in April [2025],” Hiltz says. “It’s driven by philanthropy, like our heart, vascular and stroke institute.”

The Rooney Heart Institute is already on track to becoming a top heart hospital in America, and the new facility will be icing on the cake in making that happen, Hiltz says. “Again, driven by philanthropy. Those projects would not happen but for very generous donors.”

Healthcare Network, a Naples-based Federally Qualified Health Center, has added two new primary care clinics since 2015 named for lead donor Jerry Nichols, along with two mobile units dedicated to providing dental and primary care services in underserved communities, thanks to support from the Bill and Julia Van Domelen Foundation.

Philanthropists such as Nichols and Van Domelen “want to help close the gaps in health care and the things they have that other people do not have,” says Jamie Ulmer, CEO of Healthcare Network.

“I would say that many of the donors in Southwest Florida are deep-rooted in the health and well-being of the entire community,” he says. “And what they realize is that it leads to a stronger and more vibrant region.”

Neighborhood Health Clinic, which fulfills its mission to deliver care to low-income, working but uninsured Collier County adults, uses a professional volunteer medical staff and accepts no government funding—including Medicare and Medicaid. A capital campaign that finished two and a half years ahead of schedule grew the Goodlette-Frank Road clinic from 11,000 square feet to more than 32,000. That includes the Van Domelen Education and Wellness Building, funded by the Bill and Julia Van Domelen Foundation.

Keith Maples—chief development officer for the clinic that was founded in the late 1990s by Dr. Bill and Nancy Lascheid, and is now run by their daughter, Leslie Lascheid—said its donors value seeing the immediate effects on the community.

“There are so many people in our community who have the means to contribute and be a part of something, and they see the great work that is being done here,” Maples says. “I think people realize that we’re very fiscally responsible and that their dollar does so much more … I want donors to come through our front doors and walk through our clinic and see how they’re impacting our patients. I tell donors every day, ‘I want you to see whose lives you’re changing.’”