TV series set at St. Louis Children’s Hospital to air

A documentary-style series highlighting patients, faculty physicians and other staff at St. Louis Children’s Hospital will debut Saturday, March 16, on KSDK. The half-hour weekly series, “The Frontline for Hope,” will air Saturdays at 6:30 p.m.

The six-week series follows several patients, families and hospital staff at St. Louis Children’s. The first episode includes, among others, Washington University School of Medicine faculty physicians F. Sessions Cole, Brad Warner, Pirooz Eghtesady and Stuart Sweet. Care provided by other Washington University physicians will be featured in upcoming episodes (see a list of those physicians below).

The hospital’s leadership saw the series as an opportunity to provide the public with a look behind St. Louis Children’s doors and into its culture.

“The dedication of our faculty physicians and staff is amazing every day,” says Alan L. Schwartz, the hospital’s pediatrician-in-chief, the Harriet B. Spoehrer Professor, and chair of the university’s Department of Pediatrics. “The cameras can only hope to capture a small piece of that. But they will be able to show the level of expertise, caring and commitment of the people who make St. Louis Children’s the tremendous place it is.”


The hospital produced “The Frontline for Hope” with St. Louis-based Coolfire Media and Coolfire Originals. Sportscaster and St. Louisan Joe Buck, an executive producer of the series, narrates the shows, and KSDK (Channel 5) has agreed to air the six programs.

Coolfire began shooting the series in July. It used the hospital as an on-site production hub while documenting the experiences of nearly two dozen patients, some from St. Louis city and St. Charles County, and some from as far away as Dublin.

The camera crews captured what happens when a child is transported to the emergency room after a critical injury; what it’s like for families as they spend weeks or months at a child’s bedside, learning to cope with profound illness; how courageously children fight through illnesses; and how physicians and staff handle triumphs and losses.

Says Schwartz: “We are proud to be partners with St. Louis Children’s on behalf of the children and families we serve.”

Other Washington University faculty physicans featured in the series are Jeff Leonard, Dee Hodge III, Barbara Warner, Janice Brunstrom-Hernandez, T.S. Park, George F. Van Hare and Umar Boston.

To read about the physicians and staff featured in the series, see the show’s web page highlighting the St. Louis Children’s team.

For more information about the series, see the website for “The Frontline for Hope.”