Podcast | Episode 19: Brooks Health Foundation with Jessica Cummings
PodcastAug 17, 2022
Welcome to the Brooks Rehabilitation podcast where we talk to our rehabilitation professionals to shed light on the stellar programs and services we offer to help our patients reach their highest levels of recovery.
On this episode we talk with Jessica Cummings, VP of Community Engagement about what Brooks Rehabilitation being a nonprofit means and how it benefits our patients and community.
Send us an email with your questions, comments or podcast ideas to [email protected]!
Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast app! Search ‘Brooks Rehabilitation Podcast.’ You can also listen online. Below is a transcript of our newest episode.
Podcast Episode
Podcast Transcript
Tracy Davis:
Welcome to the Brooks Rehabilitation Podcast. My name is Tracy Davis. On this episode, I’m joined by Jessica Cummings. She is the vice president of community engagement here at Brooks. I think you’re really going to enjoy this episode. You’re going to learn a little bit more about Brooks and who we are as a nonprofit, what that means and how it benefits our community and our patients. Before we get into the episode, I want to encourage you to head over to brooksrehab.org to learn more about our incredible organization. We have information about any of the things that you hear on this podcast, and so much more. Go onto brooksrehab.org, and also check us out on our social media platforms. We have all of the information about things that we have going on on those platforms. We would love for you to check us out over there and follow us to stay up to date on some timely events that might be coming up soon that you can be involved with. Thank you again for listening, and we’re going to get right into the episode with Jessica Cummings.
Tracy Davis:
Jessica, thanks for coming onto the podcast. If you would, just let everybody know who you are, maybe a little bit about your background and how you got to Brooks.
Jessica Cummings:
Sure. So my name is Jessica Cummings. I am the vice president of community engagement here at Brooks Rehabilitation and my path is probably not one that would be typical of someone that’s in my position. I started my career as an athletic trainer.
Tracy Davis:
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Cummings:
Very familiar with Brooks and what we do in the therapy realm, quickly dovetailed to working in professional sports, but on the marketing side and sales side, worked there for 10 years, loved it, but traveled 200 plus days out of the year-
Tracy Davis:
Oh, wow.
Jessica Cummings:
… and your body can only take so much before you just go, “The lady at the Delta counter knows me better than my family. This isn’t a good thing.”
Tracy Davis:
It sounds like it’d be a fun thing to do for a certain period of time.
Jessica Cummings:
It was, and it was great in my younger life. At some point my dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He’s doing great now and at his graduation from the UF Proton Therapy Institute, one of their friends said, “Hey, Jess, what do you think about nonprofit work?”
Jessica Cummings:
I said, “Well, I’ve raised money here and there. Is it kind of the same thing?”
Jessica Cummings:
She said, “Well, yeah, it’s kind of the same thing, but on a little bit of a bigger scale. Is it something that you’d be interested in and coming to work for the Proton Therapy Institute?”
Jessica Cummings:
I said, “Absolutely. Why wouldn’t I want to give back to the organization that saved my dad’s life?” From there, I started working at UF Health Jacksonville at the hospital, instead of at the Proton Therapy Center.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
Loved it, loved interacting with Brooks, and when the position came available, it was only a natural fit to swing over. It married my first love of athletic training and therapy and my current love of nonprofit work.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah, that’s great. You had already had a little bit of a touch point with who Brooks was, you didn’t come into Brooks kind of completely cold to who we are a little bit.
Jessica Cummings:
I did not. I was very familiar with what we did. I worked with collegiate athletes when I was an athletic trainer-
Tracy Davis:
Okay.
Jessica Cummings:
… and then some other local smaller athletes so I was very familiar with what Brooks did. The reputation that they have in the community was fantastic and so I didn’t need to be caught up to speed on all of that.
Tracy Davis:
Right. Are you still teaching swimming and all that still?
Jessica Cummings:
I do.
Tracy Davis:
Okay.
Jessica Cummings:
I still coach. I coach middle school swimmers for the Bolles School, which is a pretty elite level group of athletes.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
It’s one that I’ve done since the early 2000s. Everybody says, “How do you do it all?” I think it’s probably when you have a passion that meets a fulfillment, you find time for it.
Tracy Davis:
Whenever I was in high school Bolles was always one of those schools that everyone was a little bit scared. I guess it kind of depended on the sport at the time. Every high school seems to kind go up and down with which sport they’re really good at. I went to University Christian and they got really good at football after I left, they won a few state championships and stuff, but I know that Bolles has always been known for their swim team.
Jessica Cummings:
They have, and we’ve had some really great athletes that have come out and done some amazing things on the professional circuit as Olympic athletes. One thing that people probably don’t know about Bolles is the men’s and the women’s high school team has won consecutive state championships for now decades.
Tracy Davis:
Wow.
Jessica Cummings:
I’m not going to say how many decades, because then I would get it wrong and somebody would tell me that I’m wrong, but consecutive state championships for multiple decades is pretty fantastic.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
Also these athletes have gone on to coach and succeed in many different realms.
Tracy Davis:
Sure.
Jessica Cummings:
But certainly the medal count is pretty high for that organization.
Tracy Davis:
To me, Tipper Jones.
Jessica Cummings:
Sure, absolutely.
Tracy Davis:
Because that was my childhood is the Atlanta Braves.
Jessica Cummings:
Absolutely.
Tracy Davis:
Finding out that he went there and all that, and he’s a local guy it’s always, and then we have Tebow and he went to Nice and stuff, but it’s kind of whenever you have these people that go on and they’re from your local area, it always means a lot more for some reason.
Jessica Cummings:
It is and all the unknown athletes too. All those that go on to do really amazing things that maybe you didn’t know them in the high school realm, but they go on to do pretty fantastic things at the collegiate level and at the professional level.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah. Well, let’s get into the Brooks Health Foundation a little bit and anything else that you wanted to talk about with that. Just to kind of set the table, I’m sure a lot of people know who Brooks is, a lot of people’s touchpoint with Brooks is maybe they’ve had therapy with us or they refer patients to us or some sort of a therapy level, but they probably don’t realize that we are a nonprofit and a lot of people, they don’t really think about that kind of stuff, the financial levels of companies. What is a nonprofit and how’s that integrating with Brooks?
Jessica Cummings:
That’s probably the number one surprising thing that I get from people is, “Wait, Brooks is a nonprofit hospital?”
Tracy Davis:
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Cummings:
Yes. What does that mean? And really it’s, without getting into the legality of what is a nonprofit, what is a 501C3, why do we have that? I’m just going to break it down into some simplistic terms. Really that’s we receive a credit in the form of taxes from the state and federal government that allow us to operate assuming that we are giving back to the community.
Tracy Davis:
Right.
Jessica Cummings:
That’s probably the real key there. The federal government requires that you do some reporting to say how you’re doing this. Every three years we do the community health needs assessment.
Tracy Davis:
Right.
Jessica Cummings:
Probably one interesting thing about Jacksonville in the medical community is Brooks is one of five nonprofit hospitals that is here. Instead of us all doing the community health needs assessment separately, interviewing the same organizations, interviewing the same specialists, we do it together. Collaboratively, we do this community health needs assessment, which really takes a look at where is Jacksonville and consider Jacksonville the five county area, where is Jacksonville falling short and what can we do in order to make our citizens better, healthier, and live longer fuller lives?
Tracy Davis:
Sure. It’s assessing the needs. Yeah/
Jessica Cummings:
Exactly.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah, yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
It’s not a pretty report when it comes out, it is …
Tracy Davis:
Kind of hard to see, wow, we are really lacking in these areas.
Jessica Cummings:
It’s tough to swallow. It’s tough to look at and you say, “Wow, for another cycle, for another three years, mental health is still a problem.” These nonprofit hospitals we’ve come together and we said, “Okay, well, let’s help the citizens recognize the signs and symptoms of mental distress,” and so we brought forth the mental health first aid.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah. I remember that.
Jessica Cummings:
Trained 10,000 laypersons to recognize these signs and symptoms and that’s something that a lot of communities can’t do if we’re not combined together. Financially, it just would be restrictive.
Tracy Davis:
Right.
Jessica Cummings:
What some might see as competitors in the market, in the free market, we’re actually coming to together as collaborators.
Tracy Davis:
Right. Yeah, that program specifically, and mental health is always a bigger topic now. I remember we started that a while back and I remember it being a huge deal that, wow, we’re going to partner with all these other organizations. We had people going and getting trained, just regular employees, it’s anybody can do it, right?
Jessica Cummings:
Anybody can do it. We, the nonprofit hospitals, offer adults so that would be anybody over 18, but there is a child’s component. Duvall County Public Schools has actually implemented it with all the schools so that way the kids can recognize if their classmates are having some of these struggles, which is what we need to be able to recognize that it’s going to occur so that way the individual can get the help that they would need.
Tracy Davis:
Because even back in the day for all of us, I’m sure anybody listening as well and you and I, whenever you’re younger, you just think maybe they’re just weird or something’s off but now if you’re trained to have that eye of maybe there’s something going on here and the earlier that you can nip it in the bud or get them help, whatever, the better off that doesn’t send them on some sort of a long years down the road journey of having a ton of issues.
Jessica Cummings:
Exactly. Or the worst happens.
Tracy Davis:
Right. Or that.
Jessica Cummings:
That the individual decides that they need to take their life.
Tracy Davis:
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Cummings:
I think what we’ve seen at Brooks is as a traumatic incident occurs with an individual, there’s going to be some amount of depression that’s going to occur.
Tracy Davis:
Right.
Jessica Cummings:
You’re out doing your leisurely activities that you normally would’ve done, now you’ve got a spinal cord injury, now you can no longer use your legs.
Tracy Davis:
Right.
Jessica Cummings:
There is going to be some form of depression that’s going to occur so what can we do? How can we at Brooks help these individuals, whether it be through mental health first aid and getting them the help that they need with their mental health, or can we provide some other programs that might help bring them out of that depressive state?
Tracy Davis:
Yeah, absolutely. That kind of leads me into my next question about how does Brooks give back to the community? I love doing stuff with adaptive sports whenever I get to go out there and do photos and videos with them like I just did with the surf event. Talk a little bit about that and you said that as Brooks, what are we doing to help give back as part of being a nonprofit, but also just a part of the culture of who Brooks is?
Jessica Cummings:
Yeah, so our mission is to enhance the lives of those with differing abilities and truly getting them to love things that they’ve always done before, regardless of their ability. Making sure that we can rehabilitate them in a way that allows them to really succeed in life. You mentioned one of them and that is adaptive sports, but we also have a whole menagerie of other free community benefit programs.
Tracy Davis:
We do.
Jessica Cummings:
We’ve got a pediatric recreation program, we’ve got a school re-entry program that allows us to help those kiddos get back into school, we’ve got the Neuro Recovery Center, we have the Brain Injury Clubhouse we have Brooks Aphasia Center. I’m going to miss one in here.
Tracy Davis:
I know.
Jessica Cummings:
But really it’s … We’ve got an adaptive wellness program that we partner with a YMCA on, but it’s all about how can we get people back to the life that they’ve loved in the past. The benefit that we have and one of the reasons that we are that nonprofit is because we can provide it for low or no cost.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
Sometimes it’s completely free like you talked about adaptive surfing, that’s completely free to anyone within the community.
Tracy Davis:
I think we had 70 surfers out there this year.
Jessica Cummings:
Yeah.
Tracy Davis:
[inaudible 00:11:44] more volunteers, yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
It was a really cool event and for a lot of these people, it may be a first time that they’ve one, been in the water since their injury or two, it’s probably the first time that they’ve had motion without using their chair.
Tracy Davis:
Well, imagine being in some of their, and it’s people that it’s not just TBIs and spinal cord and all that, it’s anything. Some of them, they would never think, “I’ll be able to surf,” and then here they are, out there riding, “I’ve never even surfed.” They’re out there riding waves and it’s such a cool event. I’ve been doing it probably eight years now that we’ve been doing it, that I’ve been a part of it.
Jessica Cummings:
A lot of our individuals with differing abilities are better than an able bodied person.
Tracy Davis:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
I think I saw a photo that you took Tracy and it was awesome. It was an individual who was surfing on his hands and that was just a super cool photo.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
But really back to your original question of how does Brooks give back? We provide all of these programs at little or no cost.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
We provide millions of dollars worth of technology and then our recovery center that otherwise individuals wouldn’t have access to. We have people that move from out of state, out of county, out of country to come here for some of these services. We also provide research and so we do a lot of research on how can we make sure that we’re having the best rehab practices that we could.
Tracy Davis:
Yep.
Jessica Cummings:
We also provide extra education for our staff and for the community to make sure that everybody’s up to par with the best practices and all of these things Brooks takes and underwrites as part of our give back, as our community benefit and really going above and beyond with what we do to keep our nonprofit hospital status.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah, and I have had the pleasure of interviewing so many different people for different videos. One that stood out while you were saying all that is I did one specifically on some international patients that came here and they were like, “You guys don’t understand. What you have here is completely unique.” Some of them have been in whatever their disability is for either their whole life or for a long time after their injury. They would tell us, “We’ve been here, we’ve been there, we’ve been to this city, a;; over, and there’s nothing like what you guys have here.” A lot of them do move here just so that they can do adaptive sports and NRC and like you said, all those things,
Jessica Cummings:
Jacksonville’s becoming this medical destination and not just for-
Tracy Davis:
We have so many hospitals here.
Jessica Cummings:
Right. Not just for our acute care hospitals, not for just our specialty hospitals that we have here, but now for rehabilitation and how do we become, how do we take it beyond what insurance will stop paying for or how do we take it beyond what a doctor can prescribe, but really making sure that we live out the mission of Brooks Rehabilitation and really that of our founder, Dr. Brooks Brown.
Tracy Davis:
Living here my whole life always taken it for granted, but whenever I go other places, and like I said, we just have so many hospitals here and not just hospitals, but just healthcare in general. Jacksonville’s just so big on healthcare which is great for Brooks, that’s just so many more patients that we get to help.
Jessica Cummings:
Absolutely. There’s never a shortage. As we start to age, as the Boomer generation starts to age, we’re certainly going to need these resources, which is even more imperative that we all work together and we collaborate.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah. It’s a theme that comes up on the podcast all the time is just our system. We’ve been talking about the community benefits, but like you’re saying, our aging services. We kind of have everything from when you’re born to the end of your life. We’re that whole system and anything you want to do in between, there’s something for you as far as at Brooks goes.
Tracy Davis:
We have a lot of employees at Brooks, obviously. I used to know the number. It’s quite a few thousand now and I’m sure a lot of them listening might say they want to get involved in some way, shape, or form. They might be saying, “I’m not a philanthropist, but there’s something I can do.” What can they do to get involved at Brooks or even if there’s anything outside of Brooks can do too?
Jessica Cummings:
Yeah. I think back to an interview that I heard, oh, many moons ago, but it was with Dolores Bar Weaver and the Weavers have been such great philanthropists for the city of Jacksonville and outside of the city of Jacksonville. But one thing that she said was she wished she would’ve known earlier in life that her donation of any size would matter.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
She said she thought she had to get to a point of where she can donate millions upon millions upon millions for it to make a difference. I think we have a really unique program, we call it WHEEL, which is an acronym. It stands for We’re Helping Everyone Experience Life.
Tracy Davis:
Right.
Jessica Cummings:
It’s really our way for our employees to give back whether it be a dollar a pay period or $20 a pay period or as many dollars as they would like to give, but then it just becomes the collective power of all. I might not have the Weavers’ type of influence, but I can certainly give out of my paycheck and that goes to a larger pot. What we can provide with those dollars is it could be scholarships to those community benefit programs that we talked about. For some of them, there is a cost and so we can supplement that cost with what our employees are giving back.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
We also have the opportunity for employee assistance, so sometimes our employees fall on some really hard times and through the generosity of their peers, we are able to help them in their time of need, which has been just really great. If you think about what we’re giving back with WHEEL, we also give to our patients. For our patients that might need durable medical equipment or some medication or ramps for their house, things that they can’t afford, we can provide that through the generosity of our employees.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah, and a lot of people take time to think about something like adaptive sports, again, how much it costs to operate that on a yearly basis and driving all the wheelchairs for the soccer event each week or rugby or whatever it is. Yeah, there’s a lot of operating, just regular operating costs associated.
Jessica Cummings:
There’s a lot of equipment and there’s a lot of specialized equipment.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
I think anyone who’s ever experienced something where they might need a piece of medical equipment can tell you it’s not cheap.
Tracy Davis:
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Cummings:
So for Brooks to be able to provide everything that the participant would need …
Tracy Davis:
Yeah, they just show up.
Jessica Cummings:
Is pretty fantastic. They just show up, they can participate, and that’s not alone from Brooks’s dollars, but also from what our employees give to make sure that everybody has, as best we can, provide the needs that they so desperately need.
Tracy Davis:
To go back to the mental health too, if there was nothing else that we did other than getting people to not be isolated, we wouldn’t have to do anything else, you know what I mean? Because that is such a big deal to just imagine … Being here so long I think about it probably more than just the regular person, but something like that happens to you, whatever the injury was and now you can’t do this, you can’t do, there’s a lot more can’ts in your life and you want to do those things so now you have to be at home on your couch or …
Jessica Cummings:
I’ve talked to a lot of our participants and they say, “It starts out when you’re first injured, everybody says, ‘I’m going to help. I’m going to help. I’m going to be there for you. I’m going to be there for you,'” which they do initially until they go on with their life.
Tracy Davis:
A year goes down the road and …
Jessica Cummings:
Exactly. Then that social isolation that you talked about leads to depression and leads to really horrible outcomes.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
The more that we can provide that transportation, so we’ve got our adaptive sports bus. We’ve got Bubba who so lovingly drives people, picks them up at their home, takes them to the event, drops them back off at home in order to eliminate any barriers that might be in order to participate, not just in adaptive sports, but in our other critically needed programs.
Tracy Davis:
If there’s anyone listening that wants more information about any of this, check the podcast feed that you’re currently listening to and we’ve done a podcast on a couple of those other community programs, but also go to brooksrehab.org and you can see and get way more information on how to get involved or if you have a patient or somebody that could really use one of these programs.
Tracy Davis:
With your career and everything, what’s been the most fulfilling part of coming to Brooks and doing your job and helping raise funds for people?
Jessica Cummings:
I think it’s the thank you that you get at the end of the day.
Tracy Davis:
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Cummings:
Whether it be from our volunteers that are here that are just so willing to give back, they’ve got some extra time, they want to give back to the organization or it’s the families that just say, “You gave me my person back.”
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
I think to me, and I will not look at you because I will start to get emotional but that’s the greatest thing about it is you say, “Without Brooks, without us, without the philanthropy, without what we’re giving back to the community there isn’t that person’s life that’s changed.”
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
I wish I had a nickel for every time I hear, “Brooks saved my person,” whether that be physically, emotionally, or just really great care throughout the end of life. I think that’s been the best part. Obviously I love working with my coworkers, I love working with my team.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah, yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
But that thank you at the end of the day is what keeps you going.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah, and it makes you wonder why there’s not more stuff like, like why are we unique? It makes you wonder why isn’t there more throughout the nation and the world of programs like this, where there’s resources for people because yes, we are doing a lot, we’re doing it for a lot of people, but then you think about how many more people would actually need Brooks if only there could be stuff in other cities across the nation that could have these resources for people.
Jessica Cummings:
I think what’s really cool about Brooks is we were founded by an individual that was really a visionary.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
Dr. Brooks Brown saw that these needs were going to becoming available and he took action upon it in the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, not just waiting until we were here.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
Why? Why? Why is Brooks one of the unique ones? I think it was his vision and I think that the beautiful part of it is there’s enough of us lifers who’ve been at Brooks who can continue to carry Dr. Brown’s vision throughout. I think really the beautiful part about it is a lot of people don’t have these because they cost dollars.
Tracy Davis:
Right.
Jessica Cummings:
They’re non-revenue generating programs and so they either have to be funded by philanthropy or they have to be funded by the organization.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
When you take a look at it, it’s really hard to justify that so I think others cut those items out knowing that they’re important, but they just can’t financially afford them.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah, yeah. It is a shame when a lot of stuff comes down to money.
Jessica Cummings:
It is.
Tracy Davis:
When it comes to, you could get people out of their mental depression and stuff like that if you just threw dollars at it, you could change people’s life, but that’s everything.
Jessica Cummings:
Right? That is everything and we struggle … We do have more need than we have resources so I know that we do kind of a really cool program called Crowdsourcing and that’s where our Brooks executive team asks the employees, “If dollars weren’t an option, what would you do?” They bring forth all these super amazing programs and things that we probably should be doing but at some point you have to say, “We just don’t have the resources to do it all,” and so if there’s anybody out there with super deep pockets that just want to fund something, trust me, we’ve got some needs that we can fulfill there.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
But I do think that we could certainly change the world if not one person at a time, every couple of people at time.
Tracy Davis:
Well and what I like about Crowdsourcing is that it perpetuates the original idea of how Brooks Brown was. He was a well connected man at the time and all that kind of stuff but he saw the need for people to need rehab after surgery. He’s a surgeon, so people needed to continue on. It’s not just like, “Here you are. Surgery, go home. Everything’s good.” There’s a lot more to do.
Tracy Davis:
Then we had employees come, “Hey, we need an adaptive sports program. Hey, we need a brain injury clubhouse.”
Jessica Cummings:
Mm-hmm.
Tracy Davis:
They went out, researched the model for whatever it is. Like you’re saying a lot of it is not just resources as in money, resources as in time and that’s what Crowdsourcing is great. They come up with their idea. “Hey, we love that idea. You guys research it, figure it out, what’s it going to cost? Who else has done it? How can we improve it?” They have the time to actually spend on that thing and really formulate what it is because so many people that here are executives and whatnot, they’ve got a lot of stuff they’re already working on so if we can get people to really hone in on these things and then now we have a Helen’s House and now we have the Clubhouse and the Aphasia Center and all these things that were just ideas.
Jessica Cummings:
Sure. I love on the website that we call it ongoing recovery because that’s what it is and it’s what is going to take us beyond, as employees, what’s it going to take us beyond as patients? What’s it going to take us beyond as families?
Tracy Davis:
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Cummings:
I think to know that Brooks is willing to take a therapist or a clinical employee off, I’m going to say the floor, but take them out of their clinical role and allow them to brainstorm and ideate in order to come up with something great is a pretty strong recognition that their ideas matter.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah, yeah. Another one came to mind to me is the Brave.
Jessica Cummings:
Sure.
Tracy Davis:
Giving people a voice that they can’t speak for whatever reason and then it’s a small iPad-like device that they can actually touch on and whatnot and a lot of times they can communicate, they just can’t verbally communicate. It essentially becomes a voice for them. How powerful is communication?
Jessica Cummings:
Sure and our day treatment program. It started out as just a spinal cord injury day treatment program. It’s now transitioned into, we’re taking a look at what does a pediatric day treatment program look like?
Tracy Davis:
We have a brain injury, yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
Absolutely. All of our day treatment programs, which are just … I look at the families and I go, “What would you do without that?”
Tracy Davis:
Yeah.
Jessica Cummings:
I think that’s where that thank you comes back to is if you guys weren’t here, what would I do? I would be trying to traverse this path on my own.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah, and that’s what makes me sad whenever I think of the other areas of the nation that don’t have a Brooks, that there are people that are just going through all the things that we are trying to avoid here.
Tracy Davis:
Anyway, we can wrap it up here. Is there anything else you’d like to let people know about, how to get involved and donate or anything?
Jessica Cummings:
Yeah, certainly. We’ve got a couple of different areas. If you’d like to volunteer, we’d certainly love to have you volunteer whether that be at a day of surf or serving dinners over at Helen’s House. If you’d like to work in the hospital, we certainly are always looking for volunteers. If you’ve got something that we’re not currently offering, but we would love to chat with you about that. If you’d like to participate in one of our events, we have two fundraising events. We have a golf tournament, which is usually in the fall and we have another event in the spring. Both of those benefit these programs that we’ve just been talking about, so the programs and services here at Brooks. Certainly if you are an employee who’s listening who’s not been involved with WHEEL before and you’d like some more information, I’d be happy to share with you about that. If you’re just a community member that has been inspired, certainly we’d love to talk to you about how you can make a difference within the organization.
Tracy Davis:
Yeah, that’s excellent. All right, we’ll end it here. Thank you.
Jessica Cummings:
Thank you.
Tracy Davis:
Appreciate it.