One of the largest private health care commitments in American history is coming home to Oregon, carrying $1.1 billion for a new women’s hospital, expanded heart care, hundreds of jobs and a decade of investment expected to reach well beyond the Portland medical campus where much of the work will begin.
Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny Knight, have committed the money to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and Providence Heart Institute, opening the financial door for a project Providence had envisioned but lacked the resources to build: Oregon’s first hospital devoted entirely to women’s health.
The money will arrive over 10 years, with the first distribution scheduled for 2026. Providence plans to construct the hospital on its St. Vincent campus in Washington County while directing additional funding into cardiovascular medicine, research, diagnostic technology, clinical trials and physician recruitment.
For Oregon, the investment represents considerably more than another hospital building in the Portland metropolitan area.
The women’s hospital is expected to create hundreds of clinical and nonclinical jobs, generate construction and related economic activity and consolidate medical specialties that women frequently encounter at different hospitals, clinics and physician offices. Providence plans to bring gynecology, pregnancy services, labor and delivery, menopause care, cardiovascular medicine and other specialties together within the new facility.
Its location places that investment inside one of the busiest maternity operations in Oregon. St. Vincent delivers more than 3,000 babies annually, more than any other hospital in the state, while women account for approximately 60 percent of its admitted patients.
The existing maternity and neonatal facilities date largely to the 1990s. The new hospital will replace aging spaces with modernized labor and delivery facilities, redesigned postpartum rooms and an upgraded neonatal intensive care unit. Plans for the NICU include private rooms for families, replacing an older shared-room configuration in which specialized incubators are positioned together in a larger common space.
The project also reflects changes taking place inside maternity care itself. Oregon hospitals are treating pregnant patients who increasingly arrive with additional medical complications, including hypertension, diabetes, behavioral health conditions and substance-use disorders. Those cases can require obstetricians to work alongside cardiologists and other specialists before, during and after delivery.
At the same time, maternity services have disappeared from some Oregon communities as hospitals contend with declining birth rates, staffing difficulties and the expense of maintaining around-the-clock obstetric care. The new Providence facility will not reverse those closures, but it will substantially expand specialized women’s care at one of the state’s largest referral hospitals.
The second major destination for the Knight money is a medical program they have already spent years helping build.
Providence Heart Institute now treats nearly 63,000 patients from across the Pacific Northwest each year, compared with about 40,000 a decade ago. The new funding is expected to expand advanced cardiac imaging, clinical research and trials, heart transplantation and other complex cardiovascular services while helping Providence recruit physicians and researchers.
That portion of the investment also reaches beyond St. Vincent. Providence operates eight hospitals in Oregon, and its cardiovascular network serves patients who travel from communities throughout the state and region for advanced treatment.
The $1.1 billion commitment follows more than $200 million the Knights have already contributed to Providence Heart Institute during the past decade. Their earlier support helped expand heart transplantation, research, medical technology and treatment programs. A $75 million commitment announced earlier in 2026 was directed toward additional clinical trials, advanced procedures and transplantation work.
With the latest pledge, their total commitments to Providence climb to approximately $1.3 billion.
The scale of the contribution is striking even against the Knights’ history of philanthropy.
Their charitable giving has exceeded $9 billion over roughly two decades, with Oregon receiving some of their largest investments. In 2025, the couple committed $2 billion to Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute. They have also directed substantial funding to the University of Oregon and other research, educational and community projects.
This time, the money lands at Providence during a complicated period for hospitals across Oregon.
Health systems have faced rising labor expenses, staffing shortages, reimbursement pressures and the escalating cost of sophisticated medical equipment and specialty treatment. Providence itself has experienced financial losses, staffing reductions, service changes and a statewide nurses strike in recent years. Against that financial landscape, a privately funded commitment measured in billions gives the organization capital that ordinary hospital operating revenue would be hard pressed to reproduce.
The money is not simply being deposited into a construction account.
Providence intends to use the investment to build physical capacity while expanding the people and technology required to operate it. Recruiting physicians, increasing clinical trials, acquiring advanced cardiac imaging equipment and creating hundreds of positions turns the Knight commitment into both a medical investment and a long-term economic project.
There are still numbers Providence has not released.
The health system has not provided a final construction price for the women’s hospital, a completion date or a detailed accounting of how the $1.1 billion will be divided among construction, heart programs, research, technology and patient services. Providence has said the Knight contribution will cover a substantial share of the building expense and that additional philanthropic support will be sought.
Conceptual renderings have already been prepared for the hospital, which is planned along Barnes Road and will connect with the broader St. Vincent medical campus.
Providence St. Vincent itself reaches back to 1875, when the Sisters of Providence established Oregon’s first permanent hospital. The present medical center has grown into a 539-bed institution serving approximately 1,500 people across its campus on an average weekday.
More than 150 years after that first hospital opened, the campus is preparing for another first.
The $1.1 billion Knight commitment will give Oregon a hospital built specifically around women’s health while putting substantial new capital into one of the Northwest’s largest cardiovascular programs. Construction spending will eventually give way to permanent medical jobs, new treatment capacity and research programs designed to remain long after the final portion of the 10-year commitment has been distributed.
For a state accustomed to seeing the Knight name attached to shoes, universities, athletic facilities and cancer research, its next major appearance will be attached to something different: an Oregon hospital built around women and the medical care they may need throughout their lives.