In 2010, Heidi Pannke, a massage therapist and Alternative Medicine Coordinator at Outside In in Portland, Oregon, was awarded an MTF Community Service grant for $5,000. Through the MTF grant, 200 homeless and severely mentally disabled Portland residents were provided with massage over the course of the year. The grant provided funding in the first year of this program, and allowed the program to continue to grow in subsequent years. We asked Heidi to discuss what led her to apply for an MTF Community Service grant and how receiving the grant impacted Outside I. Below is her story.

It had always been my dream to have more massage at the Outside In Clinic. We’d had acupuncture students coming in, as well as a volunteer chiropractor, but there was hardly ever any massage therapy. I thought, “if only we could have massage therapy here more often, great things could happen.”

The Outside In Clinic primarily serves homeless youth, (although other marginalized people are included as well) addressing their various needs, through case management, housing, education, employment, and medical services. Many of the youth that Outside In serves had never had a massage before I worked on them. I would always wonder if any of them had ever received any positive healing touch at all in their lives.

In early 2009, the clinic staff was at a retreat and we did an exercise where we all wrote down what our dreams were – I wrote down that my dream would be to someday offer massage at Outside In. I began working at Outside In before I got into massage school. I was hired because of my Spanish speaking abilities, and worked in the medical clinic as an interpreter. It was from working with these clients that I began to feel that I would like to do something more to help out, and after receiving a lot of massage myself one summer, I felt called to enroll in massage school.

I started my massage classes, all the while still working part time interpreting at the clinic. Once I graduated and became a licensed massage therapist, I worked part time at a chiropractor’s office, but this wasn’t fulfilling to me. I wanted to do something more with my massage license; I wanted to be able to offer massage to our clients at Outside In.

John Duke, the director of the clinic, came to me after that retreat, and let me know if I could find a massage grant, he would help write it. I did find a grant, the Community Service Grant from the Massage Therapy Foundation. The grant was written, and a few months later, we were informed that we got it.

It was a bit of a slow start as we were figuring out how best to incorporate massage therapy into our clinic services, but once we got going, it became one of the most popular services for our clients. Some of the feedback I got from our clients was amazing. One young man who had been in and out of mental institutions his whole life, told me if he could get a massage every week, he wouldn’t need to take so many of his medications, and that for once in his life, he felt good and didn’t feel so depressed anymore. Another young lady who was struggling to get off heroin told me that the massage helped her body feel relaxed during the detoxification process. I consistently heard so much gratitude from our clients, with them telling me it was the highlight of their day, their week, their month, their year.

For about 6 months of the grant, I would take my massage table out every week to one of the clinic’s outreach sites, a social service agency that helped older homeless folks find housing. Some of these clients had not seen any sort of medical providers for sometimes upward of 20 years. But once they heard a massage therapist was there, they were eager to sign up. Sometimes clients would reveal very serious things about their medical history, and I would encourage them to follow up with one of our doctor’s. Several of my clients did, and are now receiving primary care through our clinic. One client told me he didn’t think anybody cared about him before the massage, and he was so appreciative that I came out to do this.

The grant ended in August of 2011, and since then, we have consistently had massage at the clinic four times a week. We are going to be renovating the CAM space soon, and there will be a spot for four massage tables. We are in talks with a local massage therapy training program about the possibility of bringing their students to our clinic for their clinical rotations. None of this would have been possible without the MTF grant.

Heidi Pannke

Massage Therapist / Alternative Medicine Coordinator / Records Fairy
Outside In - http://www.outsidein.org/

About Outside In

The mission of Outside In is to assist homeless youth and other low-income and marginalized people move toward improved health and self-sufficiency. Outside In, established in 1968, has continually revised services to respond to changing client needs. Current programs include a Clinic and Homeless Youth Department. The clinic is a cutting-edge blend of western and alternative medicine. It is a teaching site for Oregon Health Sciences University, and the National College of Naturopathic Medicine, providing western medicine, naturopathic, acupuncture, Chinese herbal, chiropractic, massage and dental care. The clinic provides over 17,000 visits annually for homeless youth and homeless and low income adults. In addition to the on-site clinic, our mobile medical outreach program uses a 38-foot medical van with 3 exam rooms, a lab and electronic medical records to take medical care to isolated populations who lack access to care. You can learn more about Outside In by visiting their website at www.outsidein.org

To read about all of the Community Service grants that were awarded by the MTF in 2010, read our annual report: massagetherapyfoundation.org/2010annualreport/

Heidi Pannke administering a massage to a client at Outside In