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• Brain Injury Peer Visitor Association Director Ann Boriskie Wins Statewide Hospital Hero Award. Ann was awarded the prestigious Georgia Hospital Heroes Award at the Georgia Hospital Association’s (GHA) annual Hospital Hero Awards luncheon. Ann was one of only nine individuals statewide to receive the Hero Award. She was recognized for her help in offering recovery resources to brain injury and stroke survivors and caregivers.Watch the YouTube video on why Ann received the Hero award. View more photos from the luncheon of friends and supporters of our association who attended the Hero Award Luncheon Ceremony. Read more about this award in the GHA Press Release (PDF), the Emory University Hospital Newsletter (PDF), the Shepherd Center Volunteer Newsletter (PDF), and the Shepherd Center website.
• 2016 Best Practice Award for Community Outreach at the Georgia Society of Volunteer and Retail Professionals – for the partnership with Piedmont Atlanta to establish the Brain Injury Peer Visitor Association’s program to Peer Visit with patients and their families who had a stroke or any form of brain injury. The association’s work with Piedmont Atlanta was submitted by Kevin E. Brown, Volunteer Director at Piedmont Atlanta.
• Brain Injury Law Center’s Teach Believe Inspire Award. Ann Boriskie is the May, 2015 Teach Believe Inspire recipient for the way she responded to a terrible car crash that forever altered the course of her life. Read more about the award as well as BILC’s interview with Ann on their website.
• Brain Injury Peer Visitor Association Receives Reeve Foundation Grant to support their efforts to hand out a free information packet to every survivor and his/her family. The Brain Injury Peer Visitor Association, whose volunteers support Shepherd Center brain injury patients and their loved ones, has received a 2015 Quality of Life Grant from the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. The funds will go toward the production of information packets that volunteers provide to those they seek to help. Read the full story on Shepherd Center’s website. Read in Shepherd’s Volunteer News for June 2015 about the Brain Injury Peer Visitor Association being awarded a Reeves Grant and extending kudos to the Shepherd Brain Injury Peer Visitors for their service and great help.

• Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation Quality of Life grant was awarded to the Brain Injury Peer Visitor Association for 2013 and 2015. The Foundation gave our association the grant to support our endeavors to hand out wonderful Packets of Information to all of the brain injury and stroke survivors that we Peer Visit. Read more about the Quality of Life grant. Join the Dana & Christopher Reeve Foundation’s new campaign, THE BIG IDEA — supporting “the most promising research that I have seen in my 18 years at the Reeve Foundation,” says Donna Valente. Go to www.ReeveBigIdea.org.
• 1st Runner-up in Scana Energy’s “Heartwarmers” 2014 Contest – The Heartwarmers Contest highlights SCANA Energy customers and their favorite community not-for-profit organization. See our photo on SCANA’s Facebook page.
• Connections for a Cause 2014 Enriching the Experience Award – Recognizing the limitless value of collaboration between community entitites in enriching reahabilitative experiences, from The Brookdale Center of Healthy Aging & Rehabilitation (part of the NCH Healthcare System).

• 2014 Joseph D. Greene Community Service Award — Ann Boriskie is one of four individual recipients of the Joseph D. Greene Community Service Award from the Healthcare Georgia Foundation. This award is only presented every two years. Gary D. Nelson, Ph.D., President of Healthcare Georgia Foundation, stated: “Their voluntary service, frequently invisible to others, is perhaps the most critical component of care for the underserved and for the health and well-being of their community.”
• Palacia Seaman Altruism Award 2013 by Emory Healthcare Wesley Woods Center (presented to a special person and/or group because of their altruistic [principle of living for the good of others] spirit)
• Golden Apple Family Services Department Award (Children’s Scottish Rite) — 2013 The Spirit of Shepherd Center Award for Excellence in Volunteer Service April 12, 2012
• 11 Alive Community Service Award 2011 (one of 11 recipients, including Ted Turner; awarded by WXIA-TV/Atlanta, Channel 11)
• Recognized as one of the 2009 Shepherd Angels (for outstanding volunteer service to the Shepherd Center and Shepherd Pathways)

Beryl Waters volunteers at Shepherd Center daily. She is a Brain Injury Peer Visitor as part of the Brain Injury Peer Visitor Association’s Program at Shepherd. Beryl is a survivor of two brain aneurysms.

Beryl loves plants and lovingly takes care of the plants in the Shepherd greenhouse and in Shepherd’s beloved Secret Garden (a place many patients and families go to relax and enjoy being outside, away from the hospital setting).

Read more (PDF) about Beryl in Shepherd Center’s September 2017 Newsletter.

One of our invaluable Peer Visitors, Tom Leahy, is in the January 2015 Shepherd’s Volunteer News! Tom has been Peer Visiting at Shepherd ABI, NSU and Emory Eastside in Snellville for years now. He often reviews my manuscripts and gives me great business advice and words of wisdom from his vast experience and knowledge. He also comes to most Packet Parties to help us assemble new Packets of Information. He takes in new packets and pink invites when we are out of stock. I just want to THANK TOM and acknowledge this great article and all of his hard work. Thanks for mentioning our Brain Injury Peer Visitor Association and program!

~ Ann Boriskie

Read the article about Tom here (PDF).

The University of Wisconsin Hospital and School of Medicine and Public Health has a new Brain Injury Peer Visitor Program in their Neuro ICU Unit and Neuro Unit. This program is part of the Brain Injury Peer Visitor Association.

UW Hospital has six volunteers working in the Brain Injury Peer Visitor program. Five of the volunteers are former brain injury patients at UW Hospital, and the fifth is the caregiver of a former patient.

The volunteers visit with current brain injury patients and their families. They answer questions, listen and, maybe most importantly, let the patients know they are not alone.

UW Hospital has become the first hospital in the Midwest to create a Brain Injury Peer Visitor Program!

Read an article about the program on the UW website.

Naples, Florida now has a Brain Injury Peer Visitor Association team of volunteers (all brain injury survivors) at the 54-bed rehabilitation center at The Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging & Rehabilitation. Brookdale is part of the NCH Healthcare System.Naples found Ann Boriskie, the director of the Brain Injury Peer Visitor Association, via the Internet, and worked about 9 months with Ann to have her establish their Brain Injury Peer Visiting team.

Read the full story here!

Read ‘Visitors’ Changing Lives One Story At A Time in the NCH Healthcare System’s Health Matters January 2014.

Read Surprising Help for Brain Injury Survivors (PDF). The article explains the role of the Brain Injury Peer Visitor Association and program, and how other survivors help patients at the NCH Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging & Rehabilitation improve!

Grady Hospital selected the Brain Injury Peer Visitor team of volunteers to be their Volunteer of the Month during Stroke Awareness Month, May 2013!

Click here to read the Grady monthly newsletter, INSIDE GRADY, May 2013.

Shepherd Center’s online Spinal Column Magazine has a wonderful article on our Brain Injury Peer Visitor Association and program at Shepherd, written by John Christensen. Read the story about four brain injury survivors and how they “give back” their help to assist other brain injury patients and their families at the Shepherd Center and Shepherd Pathways. Told in their own words, read the moving stories of: the program’s founder, Ann Boriskie (car wreck survivor); Bruce Allen (abscesses in his brain); Kris Lorenz (survived a car wreck with an 18 wheeler truck); Roseann Olson (actually died and drowned when scuba diving and lived to tell about it).

Read this Spinal Column article and see all of the photos (PDF)!

Ann Boriskie, a member of the Peachtree Pilot Club in Atlanta, Georgia, spoke at the Pilot International Annual Convention & Leadership Conference on July 20, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The title of her speech was “Life Will Never be the Same — But it Can Be Better!” She spoke to a room of almost 1,000 Pilot Club members from across the United States and the world.On July 21, Ann presented an informative workshop on “First Aid for Brain Injury Survivors & Their Loved Ones; Hope, Support, Empathy, Education & Information©”.

Pilot International’s main mission is to educate about brain health and brain safety.