HARLINGEN — One life saved, and that makes all her work worthwhile.
“People always tell me, ‘Oh, by the way, my friend had a stroke and I recognized it right away,’” said Summer Abu Jemeza Hassan, chief executive officer of the Stroke Research and Education Foundation.
She founded the nonprofit organization four years ago with her husband, Dr. Ameer Hassan, head of the neuroscience department at Valley Baptist Medical Center. They in turn partnered with Dr. Wondwossen Tekle, director of stroke and neurocritical care at Valley Baptist. Together, the three new Valleyites created the organization.
“I run the stroke foundation, it’s a nonprofit foundation mainly to benefit the Rio Grande Valley,” said Hassan, the mother of two children.
She, Tekle and her husband saw very quickly the need to educate locals about stroke and its causes.
“We wanted to do something for the community that we live in, and that’s how we came up with the idea of the stroke and education foundation,” she said. “We are strong believers in research. We wanted to see what we could do through research to prove the way of living is the main cause of stroke.”
Hassan hails from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, whereas Dr. Hassan was born and raised in New Jersey by Egyptian parents. Tekle comes from Ethiopia. He and Dr. Hassan are board members of the organization.
Hassan said obesity and heavy drinking can contribute to stroke, so she has been using the foundation to put out educational messages about better health practices.
“I don’t believe obesity is a disease, it is a way of living,” she said. “It’s by choice, it’s what you do in your life and how does that affect your health.”
So that’s why she uses the foundation to raise money for education. She’s used her training as a software engineer and her business experience to “market” the cause of better health for the prevention of stroke. Through donations she’s been making public services announcements on television and billboards and holding symposiums on the subject.
Her main contributors are local pharmaceutical companies but anyone can donate to the cause. All the work and money is paying off. She frequently has chance conversations with people who tell what has become a familiar story.
“They will come to me and say, ‘You know what, my neighbor had symptoms, and he thought it was nothing, but I remember what you said on TV and I called 911,’” she recalled. “Honestly, that makes my day.”
Anyone wishing to donate can do so on the organization’s website: www.strokeref.org.
