Michael Murphy
(602) 344-1231
Michael.Murphy@valleywisehealth.org
Shannon Sowby for Valleywise Health
(602) 615-6235
shannon.sowby@lt.agency
PHOENIX (Oct. 14, 2025) – Sixty years ago, the Diane & Bruce Halle Arizona Burn Center began to transform the way Valleywise Health cares for burn patients by providing innovative treatments that have become a model for hospitals across the country.
The establishment of the burn center in 1965 is credited with saving the lives of thousands of people who suffered severe burns, some of the most painful, life-altering and hard to treat injuries. The Halle Arizona Burn Center is the first and only facility in Arizona to bring together teams of expert surgeons, nurses and medical professionals from diverse disciplines, ranging from pharmacy to psychiatry, into a dedicated unit.
The burn center began as a five-bed unit in the original Maricopa County General Hospital. Today, it has 50 beds and is one of the busiest in the United States.
“The heart of our mission has always been outstanding patient care,” said Dr. Kevin Foster, burn center director. “The patient comes first, and a close second is care of the families because a burn injury is not just an injury to a person, it’s an injury to a family and sometimes even to a community. So patient care is really the heart and soul of what we do.”
The burn center’s service area and reputation have dramatically grown over the past 60 years:
- In March, it was re-verified as an adult and pediatric burn center by the American Burn Association, indicating the highest level of burn care. The burn center has received continual verification since its first ABA survey in 2000.
- In January, six patients from a Hawaii fireworks explosion were flown on a military plane to the burn center for treatment.
- In June 2024, the center nearly tripled in size by moving to occupy the entire fourth floor of the new Valleywise Health Medical Center.
Valleywise Health Foundation has been instrumental in the recent growth of the Halle Arizona Burn Center, leading efforts that have elevated both fundraising and community awareness. In January 2022, the Foundation announced a major grant from the Diane & Bruce Halle Foundation, supporting the naming of the Diane & Bruce Halle Arizona Burn Center.
Building on that momentum, in June 2022, Dr. Foster joined eight burn survivors from the Halle Arizona Burn Center in climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, a powerful journey captured in Valleywise Health Foundation’s documentary Courage Rising, now available on Apple TV, Prime Video and Google Play. This inspiring project brought national attention to the resilience of burn survivors and the lifesaving work of the Halle Arizona Burn Center.
Today, the burn center cares for about 1,500 inpatient and 12,000 outpatient burn victims a year.
“I’ve been here for almost 30 years and if we’ve seen close to 15,000 patients a year times 30 years, that’s a lot of patients,” Foster said. “Fortunately, most of those injuries are smaller injuries, but some of them are large. We are the resource for burn injury for not just Phoenix and Maricopa County, but also the entire state of Arizona and pretty much most of the Southwestern United States.”
In addition to the surgeons and nurses, Valleywise Health’s burn center includes a multidisciplinary team of wound care technicians, dietitians, physical and occupational therapists, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, social workers, psychologists, discharge planners and outreach coordinators.
Foster noted that 50 to 60 years ago, only half of people with burns over 30% of their body survived their injuries.
Today, the Halle Arizona Burn Center boasts a 98% survival rate.
“The discussion today isn’t about keeping people alive, it’s about restoring burn survivors’ quality of life,” Foster said. “How do they deal with their scars and their disabilities and psychological trauma? How do they reintegrate back into work and school communities and learn to be people again?
“Our new burn center is really designed to do that – to have a new paradigm of care where we really concentrate on what patients need in the outpatient arena to help them become the people they want to be again.”
ABOUT VALLEYWISE HEALTH:
With locations throughout Maricopa County, one of the country’s fastest growing metro areas, Valleywise Health has a proud 147-year tradition of providing exceptional care, without exception, every patient, every time. Today, the health system includes one of the nation’s top public teaching hospitals, a world-renowned burn center and Arizona’s largest HIV primary care center. From a new state-of-the-art acute care hospital, including the Diane & Bruce Halle Arizona Burn Center and Level I Trauma, to three behavioral health hospitals and 11 community health centers, Valleywise Health is here for every member of the community. To learn more, please visit ValleywiseHealth.org.
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