The hospital provides comprehensive pediatric specialties and subspecialties to infants, children, teens, and young adults aged 0–21[2][3][4] throughout western Ohio and the surrounding states.

[9] In 1919, as America was ending World War I, Annae Barney Gorman, a philanthropist and community activist, had purchased a building on Chapel Street and was making plans for a community center to offer health services, education and recreation for North Dayton residents.

Within a year, she opened the Barney Community Center, which provided neighborhood residents free clinics, occupational therapy classes, a milk station and lunch program.

Throughout her life, Gorman continued to be active and interested in the progress of the community center and lived to see it develop into the only convalescent hospital in the area designed to care for polio victims.

As the result of their efforts, The Barney Children's Medical Center, a four-story hospital located at 1735 Chapel Street, was opened in February 1967.

Extensive landscaping, a parking garage directly off of Valley Street, new wayfinding elements and signage, expanded and renovated trauma and emergency center all make Dayton Children's more inviting and easier to locate.

The plan calls for the construction of a 260,000 square-foot, eight-story patient tower in the center of the hospital's current Valley Street campus.

These centers are located in Vandalia, Beavercreek, Springboro, Kettering, Springfield, Warren County, Lima and Sugarcreek.