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SCI Program Receives Support from the Reeve Foundation

HEI/SBH was proud to receive a 2015 Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation Quality of Life grant. The QoL program provides support to organizations working to improve the quality of life for people living with paralysis. This grant will go to providing critical medicines to participants in our Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Center’s Community Reintegration program.

HEI/SBH’s SCI program was started in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti and quickly grew to be one of the few long-term rehabilitation programs for people with spinal cord injuries in the country. Facing huge numbers of people with SCIs post-earthquake, the program soon developed a community reintegration track, which works to get patients out of rehab centers and back into their homes and communities. The community-based participants receive physical therapy and counseling during regular home visits from nurses and therapists, as well as house modifications, medications, and nutrition support as needed. 

Dieulitha is one participant in the community-based SCI programs who could not imagine her life without the program. Injured in the earthquake, she now lives at home with her three children in the town of Miragoâne. 

The program has helped me with everything, all parts of my life. It is most important in maintaining my physical health, my psychological wellbeing, and social standing in my community. I would not be here without the program at St. Boniface.

Dieulitha

Thanks to the Reeve Foundation for supporting this program that allows so many people with spinal cord injuries to return to their homes and live safe, healthy lives.