By J.D. O’Gara

Over 1,200 runners took place in the 12th Annual Run to Home Base at Fenway Park on September 25, 2021, with an additional 500 running virtually, many of them from the Franklin area. 

“This is a cause near and dear to my heart,” says Erin LeBlanc, of Millis, who participated in the run, raising over $2,500 for the cause.

Home Base, a Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Program, is dedicated to healing the invisible wounds for Veterans of all eras, Service Members, Military Families and Families of the Fallen through world-class clinical care, wellness, education and research.

As a National Center of Excellence, Home Base operates the first and largest private-sector clinic in the nation devoted to providing life-saving clinical care and support for the treatment of the invisible wounds to include post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury, anxiety, depression, co-occurring substance use disorder, family relationship challenges and other issues associated with military service. 

“Home Base was born out of a visit to Walter Reed Medical Center by The Red Sox after they won the world series,” says Laurie Gallagher, Director of PR and Marketing for Home Base. “They came back and established everything with the help of Mass General leadership.” 

Gallagher points out that since 9/11, there have been over 100,000 veteran suicides, 30,000 of which are from veterans that served in Iraq and Afghanistan, the latter of which is the longest multigenerational war in our history.

Initially, Home Base was focused exclusively on veterans who served following 9/11, but in 2017, the program was opened to include veterans of all eras. A year later, the program expanded to include families of those who had a veteran family member who passed 

Gallagher explains that there are three different ways Home Base helps veterans and their families:

• Through an Intensive Clinical Program, located in Charlestown, that compresses years of therapy into a 2-week period. Accommodations and meals are free, and the program is designed to treat veterans and their family members who are struggling with invisible wounds of war, such as post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury, depression and anxiety. The holistic approach includes group therapy, individual treatment, fitness, nutrition and family support.

• The ComBHaT (Comprehensive Brain Health and Trauma) Program, also located at the treatment clinic in Charlestown, that is meant for veterans or service members who are part of the special operations community, such as Navy Seals, Delta Force and Green Berets. “Special operations are more apt to be in situations where there are explosions, and there’s more opportunity for them to become concussed,” says Gallagher.

• An Intensive Clinical Program for Families of the Fallen: In collaboration with the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), this treatment is focused on PTSD and prolonged grief disorder. “This can be anyone from a spouse or parent to children of a servicemember or veteran that has taken their life or was killed in action,” says Gallagher. 

Since 2009, Home Base has provided care and support to more than 25,000 Veterans and family members and trained more than 80,000 clinicians, educators, first responders and community members – all at no cost.

Headquartered in the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston, MA with a satellite location in Southwest Florida, Home Base is a nonprofit organization.

For more information, please visit www.homebase.org.