Hi, I am David Lawrence. I am the founder and the Director of Operations of
Mission Gait. I'm here today to answer the question, What is Mission Gait?
Mission Gait, structurally, is a 501(c)(3) registered public charity. It's an
educational effort, an opportunity to bring empowerment, education and knowledge to
healthcare professionals to do the best possible job for patients with complex
movement disabilities. Things that affect their ability to walk, to live, to work, to
play, to carry on their normal life.
That's a long story, I'll give you, in hopefully a few words. I've worked in this
field for 27 years and I've realized that we have an issue with how we deal
with human, complex human gait problems. Many times in physical therapy, we go
after the most common problems first: ankle sprains and easy issues.
Patients who have issues such as limb loss, Parkinson's, stroke, cerebral palsy have
much more complicated problems and the system doesn't lend itself well to those
patients. So, early on in my career, with the Veterans Administration, I saw lots
of variety of patients who needed more complex care. So, I began to plant the
seed at that point in time of a system that could educate therapists,
practitioners, and doctors alike to do the best job they possibly could for
patients with these types of problems. So, over the years I developed an
international program first called Walking Free, a prosthetic and orthotic
rehabilitation initiative for underprivileged regions of the world.
That's gone on for 17 years and has been a very successful project. But, in the
United States even though we have all the resources possible, that most people
would crave, we still have a system that doesn't really focus on quality,
one-on-one care for the time necessary for complex patients to be successful.
That's what Mission Gait is about. So, I came up with the idea to say, "How can
we educate people?" Not just on the structure of what to do for patients, but
on the philosophy, on the compassion of taking the time and effort educationally
and philosophically to do the best job possible.
Mission Gait provides educational opportunities. Opportunities through free
resources online, through continuing education courses that you can come to
for a weekend course and learn more about what this issue of complex care is
about and the complexities of human gait. You can advance that on to a
certification program, which is a self-directed, online study program, into
a certification testing environment where you can be sure that you've
learned the most that you can to help patients with complex problems, and
ultimately to a World (Gait) Congress. An opportunity for people to get together
and share the greatest practices, the greatest ideas possible here and around
the globe
First thing to get involved is acknowledgment. Acknowledge that there
are some issues and things that we need to work at to get better at. So, if you
believe in that, then you can get involved in multiple ways. First, is go to
the website. Check out the blog posts, check out the YouTube channel, all that
free information out there and and take that knowledge in and utilize it for
your patients. Come to continuing education courses. Educate yourself at
that highest level. Go on to certification programs, be involved with
the World Congress idea in the future. There's so many different things you can
do to get actually involved. Most importantly is help your patient.
Get patients out there to that highest level of capacity. Now if part of your capacity
is financial, and you have an interest in giving to an organization that has clear,
measurable goals. Then, we of course would be happy to have resources
and donations come in to Mission Gait from the financial side as well.
Visit our website at missiongait.org to learn more information about what we
have available for you on content and upcoming projects. Also, subscribe to our
YouTube channel for current information and our latest videos.