Philanthropy for Vets with TBI

Bobby McKinney, 29, watches his favorite horse Bandit, right, run at the Chastain Horse Park in Atlanta. Members of the Project Share Program visit the park weekly to ride and groom horses, or just hang out. Bobby has been medically retired from the Marines with TBI, PTSD, PCSD and back problems after suffering multiple concussions while serving in Iraq. (John W. Poole/NPR/Redux)

 

To see what cognitive therapy looked like, ProPublica and NPR spent several days with McKinney and fellow soldiers and veterans at Project Share, a charity to help brain-damaged soldiers. The program is based out of the Shepherd Center for Brain and Spinal Cord Injury in Atlanta, a nationally recognized hospital for head injuries. 

Former Home Depot magnate and philanthropist Bernie Marcus founded Project Share in January 2008 to fill the gaps left by Tricare and military and veterans hospitals, which often lack the expertise and staffing to provide a full-scale program of cognitive rehabilitation therapy. 

Cognitive rehabilitation is "very time consuming. It's not an easy deal," said Marcus. "Isn't this worthwhile? Isn't this something we should all be concerned about? Whatever it takes is what we should give them."

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