Children’s of Alabama ECMO Program Receives ELSO Award for Excellence, Gold Level
January 14, 2026
Birmingham, Ala. (Jan. 14, 2026) — Children’s of Alabama’s Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) program has once again been honored with the ELSO Award for Excellence, Gold Level, from the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO). This prestigious international recognition celebrates the program’s outstanding performance, commitment to safety, and dedication to continuous quality improvement in extracorporeal life support.
As a high-volume pediatric center, Children’s of Alabama provides specialized ECMO care to more than 50 critically ill children and infants each year, serving patients in its pediatric, neonatal, and cardiac intensive care units. The hospital also maintains a dedicated extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) program within the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, enabling rapid 24/7 response for cardiac ECMO emergencies.
The ELSO Award for Excellence is granted to centers that meet or exceed rigorous international benchmarks for patient outcomes, clinical quality, training, and research. Achieving Gold Level status demonstrates Children’s of Alabama’s deep commitment to advancing the field of ECMO through innovation, robust staff education, and data-driven quality initiatives.
"Receiving the ELSO Award for Excellence is an extremely high honor for our ECMO program and a powerful validation of the extraordinary care our team delivers every single day,” says Martha McBride, Director of Nursing, ECMO. “I am incredibly proud to work alongside the physicians, primers, specialists, nurses, perfusionists, and support staff who pour their skill, compassion, and relentless commitment into every patient and family we serve. This recognition reflects teamwork, continuous improvement, and an unwavering focus on excellence in ECMO care while placing our program among the very best in the world. It reinforces our responsibility to continue setting the highest standard for quality, safety, and outcomes.”
The recognition is the result of the collaborative efforts of pediatric intensivists, ECMO specialists and primers, nurses, respiratory therapists, perfusionists, surgeons, and many others who provide comprehensive care to some of the region’s most critically ill children. The Children’s ECMO program, opened in 1987, has been a member of ELSO since 1989. The program has been a recipient of the ELSO award since 2013, consistently refining protocols, expanding simulation-based training, and contributing to global ECMO research.
