Community Outreach Engages Area Partners, Promotes Importance of Health

A deepening commitment to community engagement intended to promote healthy lifestyle choices has become a core focus of the TIRR Memorial Hermann rehabilitation team.

While adaptive sports programs have long had a presence at TIRR Memorial Hermann, recent developments have broadened the scope of community outreach, involving a wider swath of patients, families and partners in the Greater Houston area. Since 2019, when the need for increased community outreach was identified during a strategic planning session, there has been a renewed focus on improving what had been done traditionally, through the development of a Community Outreach Plan.

“Traditionally, we’ve had a large sports presence, but we knew there was more we could be doing in the community in order for us to grow our presence,” says Catherine Murray, OTR, MOT, the rehabilitation manager at TIRR Memorial Hermann. “After people go through this life-changing injury, disease or accident, and everything is turned upside down, we wanted to provide options for when they were ready to get back out there.”

As part of this effort, a Community Health Needs Assessment was developed to gain a comprehensive understanding of the health needs in TIRR Memorial Hermann’s service area and guide the health system’s planning efforts to address those needs. While planning, special attention was given to the needs of the vulnerable populations, unmet health needs or gaps in services as well as input from community partners.

“The involvement of TIRR Memorial Hermann speaks to the fact that the programs will be well done; our employees will be there,” Murray says. “This helps make programs comfortable for the participants. We can’t own everything all the time, so we questioned how we can help the community become more inclusive, engage community partners and work with organizations that have a similar mission so that the initiatives continue to live on.

Five "Community Outreach Priorities" were highlighted:

• Prevention of Injury/Illness
• Wellness: Recreation & Arts Inclusion
• Wellness: Emotional Well-being
• Access to Health Care via Transportation
• Exercise Is Medicine^® Campaign

Murray and her team oversee the Recreation & Arts Inclusion initiative, which focuses on increasing the emotional well-being of patients through activities with community partners, events, and opportunities for recreation and arts. Key to the process has been development of an Adaptive Recreation, Leisure, Sports and Arts Guide, which consists of a detailed list of local, statewide and national parks, recreation organizations, arts resources and sports opportunities.

“The guide lists groups which have been vetted,” Murray explains. “We know they are legit, as we had partnered with them, sent patients to them or they’d been started by former patients. We made sure we were selecting resources that we knew and had experience with.”

Additionally, Murray stresses the importance of the resources being available to everyone, not just former TIRR Memorial Hermann patients. Area meetups and events have included adapted ballroom dancing at the Fred Astaire Dance Studios, adapted jiu-jitsu at Rilion Gracie West Houston, inclusive watercolor painting at Ironworks Marketplace hosted by Sew Great and Wonder Boho Art and regular pickleball nights at Chicken N Pickle in Webster. This spring will see the debut of a golf event at Houston’s Memorial Park.

“We’ve pivoted to doing more events and really building relationships with our community partners,” Murray says.

“At TIRR Memorial Hermann, we are in the business of promoting health and we want to reach the community,” adds Lauren Proe, PT, DPT, the weekend therapy manager. “We want to have community involvement in exercise and getting people moving again. It helps them build relationships in the community and increase socialization, which is important for maintaining their overall health.”

In her role leading the community outreach Exercise Is Medicine program, Proe has spearheaded the process of gathering resources by region in the greater Houston area. These include free exercise classes held at community centers, adaptive exercise programs, senior classes and wheelchair-friendly parks. An evening event hosted in partnership with the Ed Thompson Inclusive Park, located in Pearland, has helped introduce to the community the fully inclusive, 9,200-square-foot playground. A second such playground is currently being planned.

“Everybody knows that exercise is important, but when we say the word ‘exercise’ people can cringe,” Proe says. “We have the opportunity to teach people that play is exercise, and so play is medicine. If you don’t know what the community has to offer and you have a disability, you might not go in search of it. It’s our responsibility to improve the health of our community by providing them with the resources that our communities offer.”

The initiatives have been successful. Murray says feedback from people who are being treated as outpatients at TIRR and those who have participated in the events has been very favorable.

“They have said how these events really made them feel like a person again and provided a safe environment for them to try something new, or to safely return to something they used to do before their injury,” she explains. “The highest-rated benefit was socialization. The participants and their families are meeting other people who are in similar situations, getting back out into the community and having fun.”