Cookeville Regional Medical Center Raising Money For Empower Upper Cumberland

Cookeville Regional Medical Center is raising money to help pay for the medical needs of families involved in the Empower Upper Cumberland program.

CRMC Charitable Foundation Executive Director John Bell said they are looking for partnerships as well as donations to help families involved in the program with medical expenses. He said these families already get help with things like food and transportation, but not health care.

“Many of these families will get assistance on things like daycare or food, or transportation, those kinds of things, healthcare isn’t one of them,” Bell said. “So we’re relying on the community to wrap support around these families as they go through this long-term training and stability program.”

Bell said he is looking for churches, companies, and individuals in the community to get involved. He said he wants the program to be a local success story. He said some of the medical needs are simple, and any size gift can help.

“They may have some kind of insurance to cover something catastrophic, but they won’t have insurance to cover something simple like dental needs,” Bell said. “So it won’t take a large gift to have an impact on a family that right now as they begin this program, just can’t afford something like that.”

Bell said the program is not only beneficial for the family involved but also for the companies that might be involved. He said a partnership in the program is an investment for the future.

“Many of the companies we hope will sponsor, are the very companies we hope to place the Empower participants in once they complete those training programs,” Bell said. “So we’ll be offering these companies a better equipped and ready employee who is willing to work and better trained to do it, and we’re asking that they invest back into the program and help us keep this program long term.”

Bell said people can go to empoweruppercumberland.org to learn more about how the entire program works, learn about partnerships and see who is already involved.