Helping Children Get Back Their Lives After Brain Injuries

Steve Adubato is joined by Rebecca Gallanter, Executive Director, Opportunity Project, and Warren Moore, President & CEO, Children’s Specialized Hospital & Senior Vice President of Pediatric Services, RWJBarnabas Health, to talk about their new partnership, which will allow them to work with children with brain injuries who have completed rehabilitation at the hospital and are transitioning back into their previous lives.

12/7/2019 #126

Excerpt:

"Think Tank is pleased to welcome Rebecca Gallanter, who is Executive Director of a great organization called Opportunity Project and Warren Moore, President and CEO, Children's Specialized Hospital and Senior Vice President, Pediatric Services at RWJBarnabas Health. Good to see both of you. Good to see you. Thank you. Now I know Opportunity Project folks, and to disclose this, I actually hosted one of your recent golf outings. You raised a few bucks there. Opportunity Project, you had a cocktail party, not that you're drinking, but you were just saying you had a cocktail party. If someone says, "What's Opportunity Project?" You say? Opportunity Project is a wonderful program that serves adults with brain injury. We operate under a clubhouse model, which is a self-empowerment model. And what does that mean? It means that adults come in, and they determine what goals they would like to set for themselves. Right. Post-rehab. So after they've experienced a brain injury, they generally go to rehab for some time. And then they come to us at Opportunity Project. And Warren, there's been an expansion here because RWJBarnabas Health, a major supporter of NJTV News, and also what we do... and I've done a lot of leadership development in your organization. So I got to host this event. What is the connection between the two organizations? And how does it change the services, more importantly, provided to those who have serious brain injuries? So at first, Steve, you might think Children's Hospital and a program for adults recovering from brain injury... What's the connection? Right. So for us, you know, I've had the privilege, as you know, to be part of Children's Specialized Hospital for over 20 years now. And getting to know so many of the families that we work with, you start to understand the challenges that they face. And there's one consistent challenge that every family eventually will face, if they have a child with a special healthcare need, or traumatic brain injury, and that's that transition to adulthood. So for us, we knew that in some way, shape, or form, we needed to start to find partners that could assist these families in that way. And Opportunity Project is the perfect example. And the first example. We're gonna partner with an organization to really create that smooth transition, because our children that we've treated for so long make that transition to adulthood. Let's break this down a little bit. I know every brain injury is different. Every head injury is different. But what are most people facing...? We had this gentleman, Scott Pullman, who spoke at the golf..."