Plymouth foundation funds U-M brain injury initiative

The University of Michigan Health System will open a new emergency center treatment area on Feb. 16 that will be equipped to offer the most advanced care to patients with a traumatic brain injury in the first crucial hours of their crisis.

"That is what I'm most excited about," said Brenda J. Massey of Plymouth, whose family foundation recently donated a significant gift to U-M Health System for traumatic brain injury research, technological innovation, and patient and family support. U-M Health System recognized the family's generosity by naming the new emergency treatment center in their honor. The Joyce and Don Massey Family Foundation Emergency Critical Care Center, or EC3, will be among the first of its kind in the United States.

"They now know there is a 'golden hour,' and if you can get to a person who is injured quickly and give them the most appropriate treatment, that's the best outcome," Massey said. "Instead of going to the ER and getting stabilized, you're already in a critical care area and there is no time lost in treating the patient."

Massey said the new ER area would have appealed to her father, Don, who was devoted to his wife, Joyce, a "quiet woman" who was the "music and joy" in the Massey family. Joyce sustained a traumatic brain injury in a car accident in 1983 and died 10 years later. Don, who owned a network of car dealerships, including a flagship location in Plymouth, until they were sold in 2002, died in 2011.

"The purpose of the Foundation is to look for ways to improve treatment of closed head injury. It was my dad's mission to give generously to head injury (programs and research) so other people would have a better outcome than we had."

"It's really a part of their love story. They were two fortunate people who met the 'right one' and remained in love all through lives together," Massey said, adding that the work of the Foundation was "extremely important" to her father.

She said the Foundation began working with U-M Health System approximately a year ago to design a plan, the Joyce Massey TBI Program, that will accelerate improvements in traumatic brain injury treatment.

"I believe U of M is the finest hospital in Michigan and probably in surrounding states as well. We've had a very good relationship with University Hospital."

According to U-M Health System, the Joyce Massey TBI Program includes:

•A Massey EC3 Clinical Research Program, which will create the clinical infrastructure to evaluate and implement new diagnostic tools, monitoring techniques, and therapeutic strategies for ultra-early treatment of TBI and other critical illness and injury. It includes a database that will allow researchers to analyze data on all critically ill and injured patients treated in the Massey EC3. This program will be headed by Kyle Gunnerson, M.D., the emergency critical care physician and associate professor of emergency medicine who oversees the EC3.

•A Massey TBI Technology Innovation fund, which will accelerate innovative research to produce the next generation of technologies to revolutionize the care of TBI, helping to restore victims to their pre-injury status. Teams of U-M physicians, scientists and engineers will compete to receive technology development awards to fund work on devices, diagnostics, therapeutics and digital health. This program will be overseen by Kevin Ward, M.D., a professor of emergency medicine who directs the Michigan Center for Integrative Research in Critical Care.

•A Massey TBI Translational Research Program, which will seek to improve TBI patients' long-term outcomes by developing and testing new diagnostic tools, more sensitive monitoring techniques, and better early treatments that can be used in the first few hours of TBI treatment. This program will be headed by Hasan Alam, M.D., an acute-care surgeon who heads the Section of General Surgery in the U-M Department of Surgery.

•A Massey TBI Patient & Family Support Fund, which will assist patients treated in the EC3 and their families, giving need-based support to those who lack resources during a patient's hospitalization for such costs as travel, lodging and meals, as well as adapting their homes and buying special equipment not covered by insurance for post-TBI living. The U-M departments of Social Work and Emergency Medicine will oversee this fund.

•An annual Massey TBI Summit, featuring a Massey Lecture and the latest findings from U-M teams and leading experts from across the country working on cutting-edge TBI research. The inaugural summit will be held Sept. 25 in Ann Arbor.

"With this generous gift, the Massey family and foundation have expressed great confidence in the ability of our researchers to change TBI care," said James O. Woolliscroft, M.D., the U-M Medical School dean, in a press release. "Their remarkable vision will enable our care teams to explore creative ideas that ultimately will lead to more effective treatments for TBI patients."