Dallas Fort Worth Nonprofit Business Journal

Category: Health Care

  • New Project Empower receives $525,000 investment

    New Project Empower receives $525,000 investment

    United Way of Tarrant County’s Area Agency on Aging announced it received a $525,000 grant from Texas Health Resources for a new initiative – Project Empower – which will expand current work in the 76010, 76011 and 76082 zip codes to address underlying issues of health disparities in people over age 18.

    United Way of Tarrant County’s Area Agency on Aging is partnering with six other agencies for Project Empower, which is designed to encourage 1,200 residents to take steps to alleviate depression and anxiety, consume healthy food, improve self-efficacy and overcome barriers of access with technology. The initiative runs through December 31, 2022.

    “Often people who live in these areas have experienced multiple adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), traumatic events during childhood, like abuse, neglect or household dysfunction,” said Don Smith, Executive Director of the Area Agency on Aging and Vice President of Community Investment for United Way of Tarrant County. “Current research connects these childhood experiences with social determinants of health (SDOH), like home and community environments, quality of education, safety of neighborhoods, and access to transportation and healthcare. Ongoing health conditions as an adult are correlated with experiencing these through childhood.”

    Project Empower partners will provide innovative referral and asset mapping to leverage programs that improve access to healthy food, behavioral health and self-efficacy support. Highlighted programs will include: Gardens On the Go, urban arms, meal and produce delivery, healthy food maps and culturally relevant nutrition education, navigation, information and referral, case management, counseling, therapy and programs for substance-use disorder and trauma.

    Other community partners involved are:

    United Way of Tarrant County
    Aging and Disability Resource Center of Tarrant County
    North Central Texas Council of Governments
    My Health My Resources
    Meals On Wheels, Inc. of Tarrant County
    Healthy Tarrant County Collaboration
    Tarrant Area Food Bank
    Recovery Resource Center


    Innovations for this project will include food pantry locations, virtual and tele-services, screening and cross-partner referrals for food and behavioral health services. Additional community partners will serve on the task forces to augment and further expand services.

    In 2018, Texas Health Resources launched Texas Health Community Impact (TCHI) to reframe how Texas Health engages with the communities they serve by leveraging existing partners, addressing social determinants of health, and using data to drive community health improvement at the local level.

    Through existing data from Texas Health’s Community Health Needs Assessment, Texas Health Resources identified a key set of priorities to be addressed locally. In Tarrant and Parker Counties, the goal is to maximize the impact of programs addressing behavioral health and social determinants of health (SDOH) in the target communities.

    United Way of Tarrant County’s Area Agency on Aging improves the quality of life for older adults, people with disabilities and caregivers by raising awareness of unmet needs, advocating for and connecting individuals to resources, forming community partnerships and providing exemplary services.

  • Forefront Living announces new senior living community in Plano

    Forefront Living, previously Presbyterian Communities and Services, announced plans to begin construction in 2022 on a new senior living community in Plano, the Outlook at Windhaven.

    The community will be developed on the former site of Haggard Farms, an 18.2-acre creekside location just west of the northwest corner of West Spring Creek Parkway and Windhaven Parkway near Windhaven Meadows Park. With Baby Boomers owning more than 32 million of America’s homes, communities like The Outlook at Windhaven are valuable in helping aging homeowners take advantage of historic real estate prices as they transition to senior living.

    The Outlook at Windhaven will be a gated community with 153 independent living apartment homes, 30 independent living cottage homes, 32 assisted living apartment homes and 24 memory support suites. With 153 independent living apartments on five floors, it will feature 14 unique floor plans ranging from 900-1,950 square feet. The 30 independent living cottages will feature two unique floor plan options ranging from 1,800-2,000 square feet and will include front porches, private courtyards and attached garages. Additionally, the campus will feature a state-of-the-art clubhouse building with dining, fitness, entertainment and other lifestyle amenities.

    Forefront Living, located in Dallas, is a faith-based nonprofit organization comprised of a U.S. News & World Report-recognized continuing care retirement community (CCRC), Presbyterian Village North; the leading hospice services of Faith Presbyterian Hospice; and its newest addition, the T. Boone Pickens Hospice and Palliative Care Center. The Forefront Living Foundation and its Board of Trustees leadership team help ensure excellence and compassionate care for those residents, patients and families in Greater Dallas served through Faith Presbyterian Hospice and Presbyterian Village North. The organization strives to empower individuals to live their lives to the fullest, and does this by providing a standard for excellence, premier training, quality services and compassionate care.

  • LVTRise and Sixty & Better collaborate

    LVTRise has partnered with Sixty & Better to promote healthy habits for those fighting chronic diseases or diabetes at the Rise Community Center, on June 15th where they provided the One and Done program to all attendees! Attendees were able to take home a self-management kit; either for chronic diseases or diabetes and taught the proper methods of use. The kits also included books and DVDs for relaxation and education

  • The Jordan Elizabeth Harris Foundation funds mental health wellness curriculum at TCU/UNTHSC School of Medicine

    The Jordan Elizabeth Harris Foundation, a nonprofit serving North Texas, has provided research funding in the amount of $15,000 to the TCU and UNTHSC School of Medicine’s THRIVE wellness curriculum. Physician burnout has become an epidemic, with far reaching implications for patients, clinicians, and health systems. Physicians in training must be educated about burnout, but more importantly must be engaged to consider what information, skills, and advancements are needed to mitigate the effects of burnout and move toward resilience.

    Simply stated, medical students are a population at risk for mental health challenges and suicide. The TCU and UNTHSC School of Medicine supports its physicians in training and is proactive in arming them with the proper tools to be mentally healthy students as well as physicians in their chosen fields of medicine.

    The TCU and UNTHSC School of Medicine has developed the THRIVE wellness curriculum.  

    THRIVE is the longitudinal, integrated and collaborative system of instruction, learning and support for the School of Medicine students focusing on their well-being. Part of the mission of The Jordan Elizabeth Harris Foundation, a North Texas nonprofit dedicated to suicide prevention, is to support innovative projects that address mental health. “The mental health research funding component of our mission is so critical in that it provides much needed dollars to advance the methods and ways we treat mental health including depression and suicide,” Christina Judge, Executive Director. 

     “We are so pleased to be working with The Jordan Elizabeth Harris Foundation for another year and are grateful for their support of our mission to transform holistic medical education.  Students in medical school face significant challenges and literally deal with life and death. This funding helps us to provide the skills and training necessary to be prepared for the rigors of practicing medicine,” Dr. Danika Franks, assistant dean for Student Affairs.

    “This is a generous and thoughtful gift that will pay dividends for these future physicians and their patients.  It is always a victory when we can align support from generous organizations in the community directly with our innovative and student-centered programs at the medical school.  I cannot thank The Jordan Elizabeth Harris Foundation enough for their generosity, foresight, and vision to support future physicians,” Dr. Stuart Flynn, founding dean.

  • New UTSW study shows Black and Hispanic impoverished people have worse survival rates among many cancers in young people

    Being Black or Hispanic, living in high-poverty neighborhoods, and having Medicaid or no insurance coverage are associated with higher mortality in men and women under 40 with cancer, a review by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers found.

    “Survival is not different because of biology. It’s not different because of patient-level factors,” says Caitlin Murphy, Ph.D., lead author of the study and an assistant professor of population and data sciences and internal medicine at UT Southwestern. “No matter which way we looked at the data, we still saw consistent and alarming differences in survival by race – and these are teens and young adults.” Caitlin Murphy, Ph.D

    Other findings based on an analysis of Texas Cancer Registry data from 1995 to 2016 showed:

    • Black men with non-Hodgkin lymphoma had a 57 percent survival rate compared with 75 percent for white men.
    • The survival rate for Black patients with testicular cancer was 88.7 percent, compared with 96.6 percent for white patients.
    • Survival decreased as poverty increased for these highly treatable cancers among all race and ethnic groups.
    • Men with private insurance had survival rates 20 percent higher for testicular, colorectal, and kidney cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma than for men with no insurance or with Medicaid.

    “By far the strongest predictor or association was race. In particular, the Black race was consistently associated with lower survival, even if patients are not poor and have insurance,” Murphy says.

    The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, included 55,000 female and more than 32,000 male cancer patients ages 15 to 39, a population in which few studies have been conducted as the average age of most cancer patients is 66. The Texas Cancer Registry, established in 1995 by the Texas Department of State Health Services, is one of the largest cancer registries in the United States. Sandi Pruitt, Ph.D.

    Senior author Sandi Pruitt, Ph.D., associate professor of population and data sciences, says the numbers show a need for greater investments in health care coverage and neighborhood revitalization.

    “Where Black teens and young adults are with cancer survival today is worse than it was for white kids about 10 years ago. It’s unreal,” Pruitt says. “I think it is underappreciated how much the conditions in which we are born and live impact our health, and, in this case, the health of a very special and underserved population – teens and young adults with cancer. Persistent poverty and racism, combined with the low rate of health insurance which is common in Texas, are part of the context that leads to the worse survival for certain population groups we’ve observed in this study.”

    The authors call for future research and interventions to address the disparities, including better health insurance coverage, greater inclusion of teens and young adults in clinical trials, more collection of biospecimens from underserved teens and young adults, programs and policies designed to be anti-racist, and additional studies comparing risk factors, treatment, and outcomes.

  • Nexus Recovery Center Auxiliary’s first event post-covid is a success on several fronts

    After twice canceling an annual luncheon that raised over $100,000 due to Covid-19, Dallas-based Nexus Recovery Center’s Auxiliary created a first-ever Mother’s Day Pop-Up Flower shop at their location in Dallas as an opportunity to connect its members, support Nexus clients and generate much-needed income for the organization. The event also included several sponsorship levels that allowed supporters to provide Nexus clients with special Mother’s Day gift bags.

    According to Beth Hunter, Community Engagement and Volunteer Manager at Nexus, “This was our first Mothers’ Day event and we met our fundraising objectives! The event raised over $12,000. We are especially proud and excited that we were able to provide an opportunity for the Auxiliary and other volunteers to gather together socially at Nexus for the first time in over a year!”

    The organization hopes to host this event again.

  • Despite the pandemic Methodist Health System earns high marks for patient safety

    Methodist Dallas, Methodist Mansfield, and Methodist Richardson are all proud to announce they have once again received the highest rating possible by the independent hospital watchdog, The Leapfrog Group. These ratings recognize achievements in protecting patients from errors, injuries, accidents, and infections. It is the only hospital ratings program based exclusively on hospitals’ prevention of medical errors and other harms to patients in their care.

    “This has been a very challenging year for everyone in healthcare,” says Pam Stoyanoff, FACHE, President and Chief Operating Officer, Methodist Health System. “The fact that we earned such high scores even during a pandemic speaks volumes about Methodist’s commitment to our patients.”

    Methodist Charlton Medical Center in Dallas also earned the high safety score of B.

    Developed under the guidance of a national Expert Panel, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses up to 27 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to more than 2,700 U.S. acute-care hospitals twice per year. The Hospital Safety Grade’s methodology is peer-reviewed and fully transparent, and the results are free to the public.

    “An ‘A’ safety grade is an elite designation that your community should be proud of,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. “The past year has been extraordinarily difficult for hospitals, but Methodist Health System shows us it is possible to keep a laser focus on patients and their safety, no matter what it takes.”

  • New joint venture increases local health systems’ home health services capacity

    According to a recent press release, Texas Health Resources, LHC Group and Methodist Health System will purchase and share ownership of Regent Home Health – a provider currently serving patients and families in Fort Worth, Texas.

    The agency name will change to DFW Home Health. It will be relocated to McKinney, Texas, upon finalization – joining the partnership’s current network of DFW Home Health agencies operating from locations across the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. It is anticipated that the agreement will be finalized on June 1, 2021 subject to customary closing conditions.

    DFW Home Health is a separate legal entity jointly owned by LHC Group, Texas Health Resources, and North Texas Health Facilities Management, Inc., a subsidiary of Methodist Health System. The provider has been in operation since 2012, and currently operates four agencies across the Metroplex as part of their long-standing agreement.

    Hospital and home health JV partnerships focus on delivering patient-centered care in the comfort of the patient’s home or place of residence. Working together, they enhance home health services, facilitate better coordination of care delivery, and seamlessly transition patients from the hospital to the recovery setting.

  • Students are leading mental health awareness at UNT

    NBCDFW reports that suicide is the second leading cause of death in college students. At UNT, the student-led organization, Active Minds, is starting the conversation and stamping out the stigma about mental health.

  • Grant Halliburton Foundation welcomes new board member

    The Grant Halliburton Foundation welcomes Dr. Marc Smith to its Board of Directors. Dr. Smith currently serves as superintendent of Duncanville Independent School District.