Community Health Projects



Helping make our communities healthier for everyone



The TCMS Alliance has a long history of serving our community through health related education, fundraising and service. Whether we are serving alongside one another or other community leaders, raising money, collecting needed clothing and supplies or raising awareness, there is a place for you to serve through the Alliance. Our community health projects have changed over the years, but we have been and always will be dedicated to helping make quality healthcare available to all of our neighbors and educating our community on living healthy.


For more than 20 years, Alliance members have supported efforts to provide equity in healthcare through immunizing children, teens and adults in Tarrant County who are without a medical home and health insurance through our partnerships with the Immunization Collaboration of Tarrant County and the TMA education programs of Be Wise Immunize and now Vaccines Defend What Matter. When Covid-19 vaccines first became available in our community, Alliance Members joined first responders to provide ad hoc clinics to immunize our community against the Covid-19 virus.

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For more information on how you can help email Margaret McDonald or the chair of any of the projects below.

Vaccines Defend What Matters



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 to help with check-in and to help families complete their paperwork. Older children and teens are encouraged to help as well.


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.

Immunization Collaboration of Tarrant County

Project Access Tarrant County


Project Access Tarrant County provides medical and surgical procedures to the working poor in Tarrant County. These neighbors cannot afford traditional insurance, but do not qualify for Medicaid. Services are provided by members of the Tarrant County Medical Society volunteers and local hospitals, radiology and laboratory services who donate their time, facilities and supplies. 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.


Project Access Tarrant County

Allied Health Scholarships


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.

TCMS and TCMSA Allied Health Scholarship Application

Hard Hats for Little Heads



In a joint project with the TMA and Alliances across the state, our Alliance helps to provide children with properly fitted bicycle helmets, educate the community on the benefits of helmet use and safe exercise. A properly fitting helmet can prevent almost all head injuries, up to 85 percent, the most common cause of disability or death in a bicycle crash.


Since 1994, TMA has given away more than 235,000 helmets to Texas children. Each year, our Alliance provides personally fitted helmets to 500 low income children in our community. To volunteer for a Hard Hats event or to donate toward the purchase of helmets please contact, Tom Kleuser, MD.


TMAA Hard Hats for Little Heads

The Texas Bookshare Program


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.

TMAA Texas Bookshare Program

Additional Philanthropic Efforts



In addition to supporting the above Community Health Projects, the Alliance Foundation also provides support in a smaller way through these programs.


Warm Hugs for Center for Transforming Lives - Our Warm Hugs Program donates to the Center's Wing's of Hope and collects Fleece hoodies to provide a warm jacket to the 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 using the comment Warm Hugs. Warm Hugs 2022 Donations will be collected at Walk the Trinity on October 6th. Meet at Whole Foods. Contact Duffy Bloemendal for additional drop off locations.


Shower of Love for JPS Foundation - Each spring the Alliance hosts a Shower of Love to provided desperately needed baby care items such as car seats, pack n plays, clothes, diapers and more for new mothers who give birth at JPS and can not afford these necessary items. Contact Elizabeth McCurdy for information about this year's shower to be held at her home on February 9, 2023.


TMA Foundation - Donations are made to the TMA Foundation to support TMA Knowledge Center, Physician's Benevolent Fund, Honorary members, Physician Student Loan Fund, and more.