The West Englewood Support and Training (WEST) nonprofit organization was awarded a multi-year $90,000 grant to address the lack of access to healthcare for Parkinson's patients in Englewood, Chicago. The grant will allow WEST to execute its mission of providing medical and social support networks for disabled residents with Parkinson's over the next 3 years. WEST will also facilitate a consortium of local healthcare and social services organizations to address the impact of limited access to treatment and research for neurological conditions like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and traumatic brain injury among inner city residents. The funding received will help prototype WEST's healthcare information and referral programs to inform future public health strategies in Chicago.

1. Grant Relieves Health Care Gap 1
FROM : West Englewood Support and Training [W.E.S.T] Non-Profit Organization
6606 South Albany St., Chicago, IL. 60629
CONTACT: Jeffery Massey, Sr., Executive Director (Phone: 773-476-9049)
For immediate release 6/17/2009
West Englewood Support and Training Awarded Multi-Year Grant to Relieve Gap
in Parkinson Patients’ Access to Care
President Obama’s initiatives to reform America’s health care system has received a local
ally as the West Englewood Support and Training (WEST) nonprofit group announced
reception of $90, 000 in grant funds. The award, issued today by the city to address
Chicago’s inner city health care access disparity, allows the group to execute its mission
providing medical and social support networks for Englewood’s disabled, Parkinson-
stricken residents. WEST is located at 66th and Albany in Chicago.
WEST, a nonprofit upstart founded by Executive Director Jeffery Massey, Sr. in 2008,
will receive the funding over a 3-year period. Also, it will provide facilitation for a
unique consortium of local health care and social service institutions, including both the
University of Chicago and University of Illinois Medical School’s public policy research
branches. The collaboration will address and share common mission goals to provide
disenfranchised inner-city citizens directly or indirectly suffering from the ravaging
impact of little or no access to quality treatment and research options for debilitating
neurological conditions. These conditions, particularly Parkinson Syndrome, include
Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis, ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease and Traumatic Brain
Injury.
With massive cuts in nonprofit funding across the country, one state proposed to slash
hundred’s of million dollars from programs. The programs provided services like adult
day care for Alzheimer’s patients and affected local and state governments ability to
cope. Hence, caring for the disabled populations will fall more heavily upon new and
diverse methods employed by neighborhood nonprofit organizations. Executive Director
Massey implored at a recent Spertus College presentation that “Congress and state
legislatures, as well as professional medical associations like the American Medical
Association…address the issue [of disparity] in financial terms loosely connected to
social woes of the urban disadvantaged.” Massey’s brother Bill, a Parkinson patient he
gives care for over 15 years, decried that “if we don’t help take care of ourselves here in
the community, then who will?”
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2. Grant Relieves Health Care Gap 2
WEST’s programs, including its health care information service and the direct-care and
advocacy referral programs, will serve as a prototype research facilitation function
informing the health care consortium’s policy consults for Chicago’s future public health
strategies. Local funding in the form of grants has come from the city’s department of
rehabilitative services, who disseminated a federal block grant received via the U.S.
Health and Human Services Minority Health Disparity Initiative.
For further information contact the executive director or WEST staff at 6606 S. Albany
St., Chicago, IL. 60629 or by phone at 773-476-9049.
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