Community Health Projects

Vaccines Defend What Matters is a joint initiative with medical alliances across the state. The TCMS Alliance Foundation provides funding to support free and low cost vaccination clinics each August and year round immunization education to families in Tarrant County who cannot afford them. This work is facilitated through the Immunization Collaboration of Tarrant County where our members serve on the board.

Alliance members volunteer at the events helping families with check-in and to complete their paperwork. Watch the E-News and our social media for Volunteer Sign Ups starting in July for the August events. Older children and teens are encouraged to help as well. There are weekday and weekend time slots. If you don't see a time that works for you, please reach out and let us know what time and day you're available as the volunteer times are flexible.

Each year, the Alliance spends as much as $15,000 to provide the immunization clinics, shots and education. This commitment has also allowed us to win additional grant funding of between $5,000 and $7,500 from the TMA Foundation. To help with the education or immunization events, contact Kelly Parsley.

The Center for Transforming Lives works along side women and their children to disrupt the cycles of poverty. Our Warm Hugs Program collects hoodies or donations to purchase them to provide a warm jacket to the low income and homeless children of the Center's Rosie K. Mauk Child Development Center. Hooded, zippered sweatshirts in sizes 0 - 5T are collected at a meeting in the early fall and delivered before our first cold snap, but you can donate to the program at any time. You can donate through the Alliance Venmo @tcmsalliance using the comment Warm Hugs. Our Amazon wishlist will be live in August. Order from the list or choose your own styles and your hoodies will be delivered to our Warm Hugs committee chair, Courtney Mitchell.

Warm Hugs 2023 Donations will be collected during September and October. Help us collect for Warm Hugs by sharing our Warm Hugs call for donations on your social media accounts. Follow @tcmsalliance on Facebook and Instagram to share the posts. Contact Courtney Mitchell courtneymitchell24@gmail.com for additional drop off locations

Project Access Tarrant County is an initiative approved by the Tarrant County Medical Society (TCMS) Board of Advisors to provide healthcare access to the uninsured and working poor in Tarrant County. TCMS has led the charge in the life of PATC, and since September 2011, PATC volunteers have provided Tarrant County’s in need with over $14.5 million in donated healthcare access. Over 1,700 patients have enrolled in PATC and have had surgical and/or other specialty procedures completed by utilizing the charitable gifts of a network of existing voluntary providers and collaborative partnerships.

PATC’s mission is to expand health care access and improve health outcomes for low-income, uninsured residents of Tarrant County, utilizing the charitable gifts of a network of existing voluntary providers and collaborative partnerships. PATC staff coordinates all of the care including transportation and a cost to PATC of only $500-$800. That's an amazing return on investment, but even more importantly the value to the patient, their family and our community is priceless. Often these lifechanging or even lifesaving procedures get the patient back to work and able to financially provide for their families.

Alliance members who are bi-lingual are needed to volunteer to help PATC staff communicate with clients.

If you are a physician who would like to volunteer, please visit the PATC website for more information.

In partnership with the Tarrant County Medical Society, the Alliance provides scholarships to highly qualified students in Allied Health fields such as nursing, nutrition, radiology technicians, and more who have financial need. This program is designed to increase the numbers of well qualified allied health professionals in Tarrant County providing the highest quality healthcare. The scholarships encourage students to finish their program so they can start supporting the work of the physicians, taking care of patients.

Alliance members serve along with Medical Society members on the Allied Health Scholarship Committee that meets twice in the spring to interview applicants and award scholarship funds. The combined funds of the Alliance and Medical Society provides between $30,000 and $40,000 in scholarships. For those in tech programs at TCC, most are given enough to completely cover the costs of their final year.

Click on the photo to the left to meet one of our scholarship recipients. Click the button below to download the scholarship application. Deadline March 31, 2023.

Our newest community health program, launched by the TMAA in 2018 with a grant from the Texas Medical Association Foundation, TMAF, and locally in 2021-22, the Texas Bookshare Program aims to provide children and families in underserved areas with the knowledge needed to lead a healthy lifestyle. In the first year, “children, their families and caregivers received nearly 400 books through Cook Children’s neighborhood clinics as well as a nearby elementary school where since 2012, fewer than one in four students have been able to read at grade level in third grade. this is heartbreaking and indefensible. We have so much work to do.” Robert Rogers, MD. Robert is a long time childhood reading advocate and leads this program for our Alliance.

Shower of Love for JPS Foundation - Did you know that 25 babies are born every day at JPS hospital, many of whom have few resources ready for them when they go home? Each spring the Alliance hosts a Shower of Love to provided desperately needed baby care items such as clothes, diapers, wipes and more for new mothers who give birth at JPS and can not afford these necessary items.

Contact Duffy Bloemendal for information about this year's shower to be held at her home in April 2024. An Amazon wish list has been created for those who are unable to attend the shower or donations may be made through the Alliance Venmo with the note Shower of Love. The wish list will close one week after the 2024 shower.

Provides assistance for Alliance members and their families in times of crisis.

Join the TLC committee and help provide a meal to a family who is dealing with illness, hospitalization, bereavement or birth, or provide a member with a ride to a meeting or an appointment.

Reach out to the TLC in your time of need or if you know of an Alliance member experiencing a difficult situation.

Contact Caryl Cochrum. ccochrum@aol.com