Central Los Angeles : TEAM HEAL
Two inner-city high schools now have a state-of-the-art sports medicine program to provide its student athletes with medical care they might not otherwise be able to afford.
“The purpose is to make sure that when these kids get hurt, they get proper medical care,” said Eloise Helwig, president of the Los Angeles Orthopedic Hospital Foundation, which is sponsoring the program at Dorsey and Crenshaw High Schools in Southwest Los Angeles.
“A lot of them don’t have the money or they just don’t have a way to get [to the orthopedic hospital],” Helwig said, and let their injuries progress. “Then they quite playing ball and sometimes even going to school.”
The program, called Team HEAL (Helping Enrich Athletes Lives), will provide the same type of sports medicine techniques used on professional athletes to student athletes at Dorsey and Crenshaw.
“At each football game there will be a orthopedic surgeon available,” Helwig said, adding that the youths will also get counseling in nutrition and exercise physiology.
The program was initiated last week at the Dorsey / Crenshaw football game and is a pilot program. Helwig said she hopes the program will be extended to other inner-city high schools.
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