Springfield Patient Represents Shriners Hospital at PGA Tour

SPRINGFIELD — Christopher Eastwood, a junior at UMass Amherst, was chosen to represent Shriners Hospitals for Children – Springfield as a patient ambassador at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, which is part of the PGA Tour, in Las Vegas from Oct. 31 through Nov. 6.

Eastwood was chosen as one of 22 patient ambassadors throughout the country to represent the hospital network at the tournament, where he will serve as a standard bearer on the weekend, carrying the scores of a group of professional golfers as they compete in the tournament.

As part of his participation in the tournament, Eastwood’s story and photo will appear in the tournament program, and his information will be shared with the Golf Channel, which will televise the tournament nationally. The broadcast reaches more than 700 million homes across 240 countries worldwide.

Eastwood’s journey with the hospital began with a referral from his pediatrician for a condition known as pectus excavatum, or a sunken chest, a birth defect that causes the sternum to bow inward, compressing the heart and the lungs. During the evaluation at the hospital, it was determined that he needed surgery. He was scheduled to have a Nuss procedure, which meant having a metal rod put in his chest to help correct the deformity.

“The purpose of the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open is to not only bring PGA Tour golf to Las Vegas, but, more importantly, to bring awareness to the great work of Shriners Hospitals for Children and the work those hospitals do to help transform the lives of children with orthopaedic conditions, burns, cleft lip and palate, and spinal-cord injuries,” said Adam Sperling, executive director of the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. “We thought that bringing more of the hospital’s patients to the tournament and giving them an opportunity to experience some of the best golfers in the world would be a great way to increase the involvement of the hospitals and the patients in this event.”