Phil and Penny Knight are making another billion-dollar bet on Oregon healthcare, giving Providence Health & Services $1.1 billion to build what the health system says will be the state’s first hospital dedicated to women’s health.

The gift, the Nike co-founder and his wife’s largest yet to Providence, will also pay for expanded cardiac imaging and clinical trials at Providence Heart Institute and recruit physicians to lead its research and heart-care programs.

Providence officials say the women’s hospital will be a new tower connected to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, also home to Providence Heart Institute. It will offer maternity, gynecology, menopause and other specialty care and expand the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit.

Dr. Ray Moreno, chief executive of St. Vincent, said Providence has envisioned a new tower for maternity and neonatal care for years but lacked the money to make it happen.

“It felt like a dream,” Moreno said. The Knight gift, he said, means “this dream of what we could do next on this campus is going to become a reality.”

St. Vincent is planning roughly 80 to 100 beds in the new building, though Moreno said the final number and mix of services haven’t been decided. St. Vincent already delivers more babies than any Oregon hospital, he said, and the project will replace much of its aging NICU space with more private rooms, updated technology and more space for technologies.

Providence officials said it was too early to say when construction of the facility might begin or when it could open.

The investment comes as Oregon’s birth rate has declined. Moreno said St. Vincent isn’t necessarily seeing more maternity patients, but it is treating more complicated pregnancies as patients are older and more often have conditions such as hypertension and diabetes.

“Providence has shown that kind of ambition in cardiovascular care, and we see the same opportunity to do something truly distinctive for women’s health,” Phil Knight said in a statement.

It’s the Knight family’s second major gift to Providence St. Vincent this year. In February, Providence announced a $75 million gift from the Knights for cardiac care, the family’s second $75 million gift to the hospital.

Dr. Dan Oseran, executive medical director of Providence Heart Institute, said the gift builds on the Knights’ decades-long relationship with St. Vincent. Oseran said he has regularly kept the couple updated on how their earlier donations were used and what those investments helped build.

The family has now pledged an estimated $1.3 billion to Providence.

The Knights are among the country’s top philanthropists. Forbes, which estimates the Knight family is worth $25.5 billion, estimates the Knights have given $4.5 billion to charity.

The family has poured billions of dollars into science and medicine, particularly in Oregon. Last year, the Knights pledged $2 billion to Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute, more than double the size of the second-largest charitable gift made by an American.

Together, the OHSU and Providence pledges amount to over $3 billion for two of Oregon’s largest healthcare and research institutions in little more than a year.

The Knights have announced several other mega-gifts in recent years, including another $500 million to OHSU, two $500 million gifts to the University of Oregon for scientific research, $400 million to Stanford University and $400 million to the 1803 Fund, an economic development nonprofit with a focus on Black Portlanders.

The Providence investment comes after the Catholic not-for-profit cut other maternal and pediatric services. Last year, it closed St. Vincent’s four-bed pediatric intensive care unit, citing low demand, and ended labor and delivery services at its Seaside hospital, citing rising costs, staffing shortages and declining births.

Oregon, meanwhile, has struggled with capacity at the highest level of newborn care. OHSU, one of two hospitals in the state equipped to care for the sickest newborns, has spent years trying to replace its crowded neonatal intensive care unit but paused the roughly $425 million project last year for lack of funding. OHSU has said it will likely need philanthropy, state money and loans to revive it.

St. Vincent will expand its NICU but Moreno said it won’t offer the highest level of newborn care. Babies who need the most specialized services will still be transferred to OHSU or Legacy Randall Children’s Hospital.

Phil Knight co-founded Nike. He stepped down as chair of the company in 2016, but he remains chair emeritus.

The Knights’ private foundation has more than doubled in assets to $5.4 billion in five years, a development with major ramifications for Oregon, given the family’s support of the state’s universities, schools and civic institutions.

In his 2016 memoir, “Shoe Dog,” Phil Knight wrote he and Penny focus their philanthropic efforts on a few causes and “when we’re gone we’ll give away most of what’s left.”