Two Philadelphia PTs expand the boundaries of public service

jonathan Bassett

Diane Cornman-Levy and Stephanie Muth stand as inspiring models of what can be accomplished with just a physical therapy degree, a little initiative and a strong desire to help those in need.

The two PTs have built Journey Home into a remarkable endeavor that serves all elements of the lives of disadvantaged individuals in inner-city Philadelphia. Journey Home is a nonprofit charitable organization whose mission is to "foster personal and organizational growth by empowering those less advantaged to empower themselves, thereby breaking the cycle of poverty." And Muth and Cornman-Levy realize that physical health is just as important in breaking that cycle as fiscal health is.

"My vision has been to create and test models in which PTs and OTs can make a difference with less fortunate members of our community in as many capacities as possible," said Journey Home founder and executive director Cornman-Levy, who launched Journey Home in 1998 as the latest enterprise in a career of community-minded service that spans 20 years.

Components

If you're interested in serving the community, Journey Home should be the first place you turn to for answers to your questions.

Opening an on-site wellness or fitness center to serve low-income residents? Journey Home will help you set up the room and get donated equipment, take you through a six-week course that ensures the safety and effectiveness of the fitness plans you'll be prescribing to residents, and serve as consultants to provide constant feedback.

Are you a PT or OT student who's looking to gain valuable experience with a variety of conditions while fostering positive change in low-income individuals? Journey Home offers a Work Readiness Program at area homeless shelters that assists individuals to return to work and an independent life.

Are you the director of a college PT program who would like to serve your community but just don't know how to start? You're in luck. Cornman-Levy and her staff have established many partnerships with academic health institutions, health care facilities, and community based organizations and would be more than happy to do the same for you.

The areas of outreach covered by Journey Home are numerous and expanding rapidly, but the initiative can be roughly broken down into a business/consultative component and a community health division.

On the consultative side, Cornman-Levy enlists the help of attorneys and business specialists to provide organizational management training for nonprofit enterprises in the Philadelphia area. Consultation training might involve teaching people who run homeless shelters to provide anger management classes, or organizing stress management workshops for community service directors. Journey Home even runs a virtual art gallery that features talented writers and artists who have a history of homelessness or chronic mental health conditions.

Community Health Division

The second component is more directly tied to what physical therapy can offer disadvantaged individuals. Realizing that returning to work is often easier after returning to physical condition, Journey Home established its Community Health Division last October. This division is separated into two areas. The Lifeskills/Work Conditioning Program helps homeless individuals return to the world of employment. An interdisciplinary team of an OT, PT and life skills educator work with a group of 15 to 20 homeless men at the Ridge Center, a Philadelphia shelter for homeless men, for a period of eight weeks.

Muth designs exercise programs that restore individuals' strength, endurance, movement, flexibility, motor control and cardiovascular status to promote optimal physical function for return to work. Muth also runs health promotion classes including stress management, nutrition and injury prevention.

"We offer education in chronic disease, physiology of drug use and addiction, a lot of self-health maintenance, specific PT screenings and intervention and basic fitness programs," said Muth, who began serving at Hands of Hope, a volunteer PT clinic Cornman-Levy had started in 1994 while teaching at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. A major deciding factor in Muth's choosing Thomas Jefferson for PT school was the ability to serve the community at this student-run center, and she signed up in just her first year. "Here you're given the opportunity to look at the whole person," she said. "It's a tremendous way for students to learn, and to ensure that PT is something they truly want to pursue."

The other half of Journey Home's Community Health Division is the Youth Fitness Coach "Train-the Trainer" Program, which passes on the experience of the PT to the directors of youth shelters. Staff members of youth service centers receive training in fitness as it relates to adolescents, and become coaches for their centers.

"We're equipped with great tools to make a phenomenal impact in the community," Muth said. "It's very rare for a resident of these centers not to have some type of musculoskeletal issue going on. You learn about health promotion in school and talk about it in the clinic, but out here it's alive and well, and we're in a superior location to encourage it."

Muth works with all of the physical problems often associated with a life on the street and an absence of medical intervention: .fractures that haven't received proper care, cardiovascular problems, respiratory compromise, neurologic problems, drug abuse, stroke and more.

Dream Realized

Cornman-Levy may not have always had the vision of Journey Home, but she remembers always being involved in some form of community service.

"Even throughout college, I realized that there is a tremendous amount of health care needs that aren't being addressed," Cornman-Levy said. So after moving to Philadelphia in 1991 and securing a teaching position at Jefferson, she began a nonprofit student-run PT clinic for the homeless called Hands of Hope with the help of Jefferson and the Salvation Army. Hands of Hope has served as a national model for six other cities that started similar physical therapy clinics for the homeless.

"My priority is serving the needs of the people, not the needs of the institution," added Cornman-Levy, who developed and implemented a curriculum that would promote more self-directed and life-long learning.

Being supported mainly through grants can be frustrating, and can sometimes stall the initiatives the two PTs would like to pursue, but it's essential for the survival of Journey Home. Grants are what allowed Cornman-Levy to establish Journey Home and develop a concentration in community health. Last summer, a grant allowed Muth to train staff members at three different youth shelters in the areas of health and fitness.

Anyone who knows Cornman-Levy realizes that despite the success of Journey Home, she is not about to stop dreaming. "A major vision we have for the future is the establishment of a community health center, which would be an affordable way for people leaving the homeless shelters to reintegrate into the community while continuing their fitness development," she said. "Going to the local YMCA is not the same thing. Most community fitness centers do not screen for, and do not have the expertise to work with, many of the conditions this population is susceptible to."

Learning E-health

Muth and Cornman-Levy have also just merged onto the information superhighway with the establishment of "E-Health Promotion for Underserved Populations," a project co-directed with Thomas Jefferson University and funded by a three-year grant from the Bureau of Health Professions.

The purpose of the project is to develop an innovative electronic health promotion model to educate OT and PT students to work on community-based teams, and to provide residents of community housing with education on how to manage chronic health problems. "We get Internet access for the providers at these homes, and develop a self-management program to help with chronic health conditions," Muth said. "PTs and OTs will design the site, which should be up and running toward the end of this year."

These are the services that Muth and Cornman-Levy are most proud of–the chance they offer to interested PT and OT students to serve their community, to gain valuable experience with the health issues facing vulnerable populations, and to foster a desire to serve that they'll take with them as they spread out across the country.

"When I started Journey Home, one goal was to create jobs for PTs in new settings," Cornman-Levy said. "The city has since adopted work readiness program, realizing the value of having PT and OT in its shelters. We also got 20 students from area PT schools to volunteer, using this site for their classroom work. We're trying to get the word out that this is a viable and rewarding area of PT, and working within it can make a real and lasting change."

• For more information about Journey Home, log on to www.journeyhome.org

Jonathan Bassett is on staff at ADVANCE, and can be reached at jbassett@merion.com