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Manhattan Beach doctor assembles Team to Win
by John Tawa
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Dr. Keith poses with Charles Nash, the athletic director and head football coach at Inglewood High School, one of the 28 high schools that Feder's West Coast Sports Medicine Foundation and Team to Win program serves. "I really feel that team sports in high school is essential for success in life," Feder said. Photo by John Tawa. |
On Monday across the Southland, high school football players will strap on the pads and begin grueling summer practices.
Less than one month later, when regular season action begins, Manhattan Beach orthopedic surgeon Dr. Keith Feder and his team will swing into action. They will staff football sidelines with doctors and all other sporting events with certified trainers. And more importantly, every public high school athlete, cheerleader and band member from San Pedro to Santa Monica east to the 110 Freeway will be fully insured for any athletic injury they might suffer.
It's all part of the highly successful Team to Win program sponsored by Feder's West Coast Sports Medicine Foundation and Centinela Hospital.
Feder and athletic trainer Jill Sleight began Team to Win in 1994.
"I started out as a team physician for Carson and Leuzinger high schools," Feder explained. "Based on my own personal experience of essentially treating kids for free in the office, when it came time that something more significant happened to them and they needed surgery, we found out that a lot of them had no insurance."
State law requires a high school athlete to have a minimum of $5,000 in insurance before stepping onto the field, but Feder said many students simply ignored the requirement.
"Because of lack of oversight, the kids would just fill out the forms as if they had insurance when indeed they did not," he said.
And even if they had the minimum insurance, it clearly was inadequate to treat major injuries.
"Five thousand dollars for a sports injury is like three ACE bandages and a Tylenol," said Foundation Board member Richard Katz, a former state legislator from the San Fernando Valley.
Feder and Sleight pitched Team to Win to Centinela Hospital.
"The hospital thought it was a great way to touch kids and touch families and give back," Sleight said.
"Kids get out of school at two o'clock," Sleight added. "They need something to do until dinner's on the table. That's the majority of our population. Our program touches those kids and gives them sports."
What started out as a small program around Centinela Hospital has grown to encompass 28 public schools and more than 12,000 kids. The program costs more than $1 million each year to administer.
Through Team to Win, every athlete, cheerleader and band member in a covered high school program has a $1 million supplementary sports injury insurance policy. Each school gets a certified athletic trainer, medical doctor coverage at football games and a sports injury clinic once a week.
"Any injury, any severity, is covered from soup to nuts, including evaluation, x-rays, MRI's, surgery, rehabilitation, with no out of pocket costs to the athlete, parent or school district," Feder said.
Team to Win also has a mentoring program for kids who want to become athletic trainers and awards scholarships to outstanding community-minded student-athletes.
"We use this as a way to keep kids in school, keep them focused, because there's a direct correlation between sports participation, better attendance, no drugs, no gangs," said Katz.
Charles Nash, the current athletic director and head football coach at Inglewood High School, has seen the effects of the Team to Win program first hand. Before Inglewood became affiliated with the program, almost half of the athletes from the surrounding working class community were without medical coverage.
"It allows our kids to have the opportunity to participate," he explained.
Nash added that the on-site trainer, which the school district could not provide, and the first rate medical care the athletes receive from Feder and his staff have been invaluable.
"Team to Win has been such an asset because it now allows us to have a level playing field," Nash said. "Now, we know if we sustain an injury, we'll be able to obtain sufficient treatment to get us back."
Dennis Haskins, an actor best known for his role as Mr. Belding on the long-running teen television show "Saved by the Bell," serves on the Foundation's Advisory Board.
"They wanted somebody who was a celebrity and was also tied into kids to come down and get to know the program," he explained. "When I found out what they did, I couldn't believe it. When I was a kid growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, when you went out for sports, they gave you pads and you played. You can't do that anymore. Keith, his wife Carol Frey and Jill were making sure that kids had insurance, medical care, trainers and doctors. I liked what they were doing so much that anything I could do to help them I did.
"If the kids are hurt, they take care of them. They're not trying to make them pros. They're trying to make them healthy so they can go on with the rest of their lives."
The Foundation hopes one day to expand its Team to Win program throughout the state. A bill currently running through the state legislature would appropriate $2 million to set up three pilot projects, matched by private funding.
"Our goal is to quadruple the number of kids covered and eventually go even farther than that," Katz explained. "The bill requires that in the pilot program, a $1 million insurance policy be provided per kid per accident. It also calls for athletic trainers 30 hours a week for injury prevention and rehab, a scholar athlete scholarship program, an athletic trainer mentoring program and medical personnel at all major sporting events."
To find out more about the Foundation and Team to Win, visit the website at www.wcsportsmed.com. ER