Akron Children’s has received a $1 million gift from Ed and Chris Muransky to expand and strengthen behavioral health services for children and adolescents across the Mahoning Valley, the Business Journal Daily reported Monday. The donation will support the Mahoning Valley Behavioral Health Initiative, a five-year effort to improve access to mental health care and expand innovative treatment programs for young people in the Valley, according to the Business Journal Daily’s reporting from Boardman.
The gift arrives as children’s behavioral health remains one of the most stretched parts of the Valley’s health care system. Families seeking counseling, intensive outpatient treatment or crisis-level care for a child have long faced waiting lists and long drives, and Akron Children’s Mahoning Valley campus in Boardman has steadily built out its behavioral health footprint to close that gap. The new five-year initiative is the next step in that build-out, backed by one of the largest single gifts the effort has drawn, the Business Journal Daily reported.
Akron Children’s behavioral health work in the Valley is centered at its Boardman campus, home to the Lois and John Orr Family Behavioral Health Center. The center houses pediatric behavioral health services including a partial hospitalization program, intensive outpatient treatment, and counseling and support services, according to Akron Children’s. It is the platform the Muransky gift will build on: more access, more treatment capacity and more programs for children and teens throughout the Mahoning Valley, per the Business Journal Daily.
The Valley’s investment in children’s behavioral health has been building for years. In December 2019, Akron Children’s opened its Boardman behavioral health center in the former Youngstown Hearing and Speech building — a $2.3 million project the health system expected to double the number of behavioral health patient visits in the Youngstown area within its first year, the Business Journal Daily reported at the time. Sharon Hrina, then vice president of Akron Children’s Hospital Mahoning Valley, told the Business Journal Daily the addition addressed one of the area’s most pressing needs.
Philanthropy has carried much of that expansion. In 2021, Christopher Thompson and his family gave $1 million through a gift of life insurance to support the behavioral health center’s programs, and the building housing the center was named the Teegan Kamzelski Building in memory of Thompson’s son, who died by suicide at age 24, according to Akron Children’s. In 2025, the Kikel Charitable Trust added another $1 million for Akron Children’s Mahoning Valley — part of more than $8 million the Kikel estate has given since 2011, Akron Children’s said. The Muransky gift continues that pattern of Valley families funding Valley care.
The gift also lands in an active season for Akron Children’s in the region. Just last week, Akron Children’s celebrated the expansion of its Warren Health Center, the Business Journal Daily reported, and the system continues to widen its physical footprint for families — including the pediatric clinic it recently opened inside Cleveland’s Broadway Club, covered in our earlier report, Akron Children’s Opens Pediatric Clinic Inside Cleveland’s Broadway Club.
For families, the levels of care housed at the Boardman center mark the difference between help close to home and a crisis handled far away. A partial hospitalization program gives a child structured, hospital-level treatment during the day while they return home at night, and intensive outpatient treatment adds scheduled therapy on top of a normal school week — the middle steps that can keep a struggling child out of an emergency room or an inpatient bed, and the kinds of programs Akron Children’s says the center provides. Expanding access to those middle steps is the practical heart of a five-year access initiative.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What we know: the gift is $1 million, from Ed and Chris Muransky, to Akron Children’s, directed to the Mahoning Valley Behavioral Health Initiative — a five-year effort to improve access to mental health care and expand innovative treatment programs for children and adolescents, as reported by the Business Journal Daily. What we’re still waiting on: the initiative’s specific program-by-program plans — which services grow first, how many additional young people the expansion is expected to serve, and the timetable for each piece. Those details have not yet been laid out publicly.
What happens next is the rollout of the five-year initiative itself. As Akron Children’s details how the Muransky gift will be put to work in Boardman and across the Valley, families will be watching for the practical measures that matter most to them: shorter waits, more clinicians, and more treatment options close to home.
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