CSU receives $10M gift to help build new equine hospital

FORT COLLINS — Colorado State University announced plans today to build a $47 million state-of-the-art equine hospital on its South Medical Campus that will teach veterinary students, promote discoveries in equine medicine and provide specialty care for horses.

The new 180,000-square-foot facility will be made possible by a gift of $10 million from the Helen K. and Arthur E. Johnson Foundation, and the hospital will be named for the Johnsons.

“We deeply appreciate this generous gift from the Johnson Foundation, and greatly value its leadership in supporting health and education across Colorado,” said CSU president Tony Frank in a media statement. “The Foundation has been a dedicated supporter of university programs for more than 20 years, and this gift will provide a monumental step forward for equine veterinary medicine at Colorado State.”

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According to the statement, the hospital will include:

• A high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scanner — the only one of its kind in the region — for use in standing equine patients, without general anesthesia, for accurate and low-stress diagnosis of disease and injury in the head and neck.

• Access to a 3 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, to be installed in a new CSU research facility adjacent to the new hospital, for precise medical diagnosis in horses.

• Eight isolation stalls providing biosecurity to treat horses with infectious disease.

• Significant expansion of the university’s Equine Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation program, made possible in a combined effort with CSU’s Orthopaedic Research Center.

In the new hospital, CSU’s 27 equine clinicians will care for about 4,000 horse patients each year and will continue to conduct clinical studies that provide new knowledge for equine medicine, often translating into human health. Also benefitting from the new hospital will be veterinary students in the CSU Doctor of Veterinary Medicine program, which number about 550 at any given time.

Lynn Campion, chairwoman of the board of trustees for the Denver-based Helen K. and Arthur E. Johnson Foundation and granddaughter of the organization’s founders, trains and rides Western performance horses and has authored two books, “Rodeo: Behind the Scenes at America’s Most Exciting Sport” and “Training and Showing the Cutting Horse.”

CSU’s equine clinical services now are housed in the James L. Voss Veterinary Teaching Hospital. Construction of the new hospital will move equine services into separate space.