Zuckerberg donation funds MRI and mammography upgrades at Wilcox Medical Center
A $1.48 million gift will keep Wilcox’s MRI services running during an eight-month renovation and add clearer 3D mammograms for Kauai patients.
Kauai patients who need MRI scans will not have to wait for Wilcox Medical Center’s imaging suite to reopen before getting care. A $1.48 million gift from Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg will pay for a mobile MRI unit and a new 3D mammography machine, allowing Wilcox to keep scanning patients during at least eight months of renovations in Līhue.
Hawaii Pacific Health announced the donation on May 21, saying it was the couple’s fifth contribution to Wilcox programs and services and pushed their total support to more than $4 million. The latest money is aimed squarely at access: Wilcox performs more than 4,000 MRI scans a year, and the mobile unit will keep that service available while the hospital upgrades the existing MRI suite. On an island where patients cannot simply drive to another hospital for the same exam, that continuity matters.
The mammography piece is just as important. Wilcox said it performed more than 8,500 mammogram exams last year, and the new 3D machine is designed to produce clearer, more detailed images. That is especially significant in Hawaii, where many women have dense breast tissue and standard mammograms can be harder to read. Wilcox was the first medical center to offer 3D mammograms on Kauai in 2010, and the new equipment extends that role rather than starting from scratch.
Jen Chahanovich, president and CEO of Wilcox Medical Center and CEO of Kauai Medical Clinic, said the Chan-Zuckerberg family repeatedly steps forward to make sure the community has access to the best medical technology. The hospital said the donation will help serve Kauai for generations, but the underlying need is immediate: better imaging can mean faster diagnoses, fewer off-island referrals and less delay for cancer and emergency care.
Wilcox, founded in 1938, is Kauai’s largest medical center, with 72 beds and 30 specialties and programs. Its emergency department is an 18-bed Primary Stroke Center with MRI and CT scanners, and it is the first American College of Surgeons-verified Level III Trauma Center in Hawaii. The new donation also follows a much larger 2024 commitment from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, which pledged more than $10.6 million for imaging-related upgrades, including a new MRI machine, renovations to MRI space, X-ray and fluoroscopy room improvements, and an interventional radiology suite, the first of its kind on Kauai.
Together, the gifts show how central imaging has become to the island’s health system. They also show what still remains: Kauai’s only full MRI service, and the only hospital of its size and specialty reach, still depends on outside philanthropy to keep pace with demand and modernize the tools patients need closest to home.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
