Former Panther Greg Olsen and family support MUSC children’s services with $400K donation
CHARLESTON — Former Pro Bowler and NFL analyst Greg Olsen and his family are making sure Garth Brooks is always around to comfort the children of South Carolina and their families when they are seriously ill.
Brooks, in this case, is a black Labrador Retriever therapy dog at the Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital at Medical University of South Carolina who is part of the services supported by Olsen’s foundation, the HEARTest Yard.
It is just one way the Olsen family, which has been through serious illness and a heart transplant, are helping families like theirs in the Carolinas.
Olsen, a former Pro Bowl tight end with the Carolina Panthers, and his wife, Kara, were at the children’s hospital on Sept. 16 to present a $400,000 check, the largest donation yet from their foundation. The money was raised through their fifth-annual celebrity golf tournament this past summer at Kiawah Island Club, which is a partner in the event.
The funding supports the HEARTest Yard Family Wellness and Resource Center at the children’s hospital and helps provide a number of different services, such as an advanced practice provider to help coordinate care to counselors who use the therapy dog to help families deal with the stress and mental health issues around serious illness.Brooks, who eagerly greets strangers and zooms in on anyone crouching down at nose level, is also a big help to Dr. Andrew Savage, a pediatric cardiologist who specializes in transplants.
“I have to break bad news all the time,” he said. “It’s so much better for me, for the family, for everybody if he’s there. There’s just something about a connection with the dog that’s so special.”
The Olsens have been on the receiving end of that bad news as well. Their son, T.J., was born with a severe heart defect known as hypoplastic left heart syndrome. He had four open heart surgeries by the age of 2. At 8 years old, he received a heart transplant. Those struggles and the extra care the family received at home inspired them to create their foundation to help other families get that same care.
“They get it,” said Dr. Mark Scheurer, chief of Children’s and Women’s Services at MUSC. “They understand, and they understand the whole cohort of families that might not have the support network or resources around them that (the Olsens) have, and they’re trying to fill that gap.”
The foundation provides a lot of the care needs that insurance or other payers won’t cover but which are essential to patient and family well-being, he said.
“These are the things that make a children’s hospital a children’s hospital,” Scheurer said.
Needing to be close to a “world-class center” for pediatric heart care for T.J. is one reason the family chose to have a place on Kiawah, Greg Olsen said. That led to the charity golf tournament to support the heart program. That has helped grow the foundation into a regional service for the Carolinas and the family hopes to keep expanding it. After 13 years of supporting those services, Olsen has a deep understanding of what the families are going through, where the needs are and how they are changing.
The foundation is trying to help provide a “comprehensive family services initiative,” Olsen said. Kids are getting great clinical care now that helps them survive the acute phase of illness and more are living into adolescence and beyond, he said.
“The other side of that coin is we’re now dealing with things that we never have dealt with before,” Olsen said. That can be post-operative care, mental health issues, family and sibling care and other services.
“As a community, we need to make sure that we’re there for these families, for everything else that comes down the road,” Olsen said. “As more and more kids survive these procedures, now we’re starting to see, OK, where are the holes? Where are the things that now need to be served better? And I think that’s what MUSC does such a great job of is identifying where those are not only for the patient but also for the patient and their extended families.”
As for T.J., now nearly 14 years old, he is playing football on his middle school team and “doing great,” Olsen said. There is no concern about his body holding up nor is there pressure to play tight end, as his father did.
“He’s young,” Olsen said. “He’s only in eighth grade, so trying a little bit of everything” on the field.
The HEARTest Yard is a proud partner of SHARE Charlotte, connecting our mission with the local community.