About Us
Founded in 2007, each one counts foundation grew out of a personal resolve by founder Brian Harrington to lead a more meaningful life after a last minute client decision saved him from boarding United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001.
A couple of years later, Brian’s close friends were given the devastating news that their 6-year-old was terminally ill. Witnessing their anguish at being helpless in alleviating their child’s pain, he sought to find organizations that could help provide complementary therapies and found none that were dedicated solely to pediatric pain management.
Since its founding, each one counts has funded more than 16,000 pain management therapies and distributed more than $500,000 in grants to its pediatric hospice and palliative care partners.
2011 marked a breakthrough year for each one counts when it piloted a Pediatric Massage Training Program to create a more sustainable impact in supplementing pain management therapies. The pilot program provided complimentary training for 22 massage therapists in pain management massage and required, as part of their participation, 50 hours of pain management massage applications in their local pediatric hospitals.
each one counts has invested in a partnership with a certified pain management massage therapist to provide pediatric massage training for groups of 10-20 people. In 2012, each one counts sponsored training programs in New York, California, Texas, Illinois, Massachusetts, Vancouver, and Toronto. To date, more than 250 certified therapists have participated in each one counts-sponsored sessions since 2011, totaling 14,000 hours of pediatric pain management applications across the country.
The Training Program has unquantifiable possibilities well into the future with the potential to grow beyond massage to include training sessions for other pain management complementary therapies. As with all programs at the start-up phase, we are still learning as we go. Perhaps the most valuable of those lessons has been the sustainability of investing in a skill set that empowers professional massage therapists to help children in pain.
Frequently Asked Questions
Unfortunately, no. Terminally ill children have many many needs; medicines, occupational therapies, emotional and spiritual counseling, and pain relief to name just s few. Historically the insurance industry has covered many expenses associated with caring for terminally ill children. However insurance does not provide for complementary pain relief therapies such as massage, pet, art, music, temperature or light therapies. All these therapies have been demonstrated to relieve a child’s physical or emotional pain without the side effects such as nausea or lethargy that come with the use of narcotics.
Aside from the main benefit of easing the physical pain and suffering, the alternative therapies allow a terminally ill child to have better quality interactions with parents, siblings and friends. During this extremely difficult time for the children and their families it is important to allow them to have the best quality time they can have together for however long they can. The use of narcotics and opiates also can have significant side effects which cause pain and discomfort such as nausea and vomiting.
We are the only organization dedicated to providing supplementary pain management therapies for children with months or weeks to live. Organizations dedicated to pediatric palliative care treat children with the goal of assisting them to get better, while pediatric hospices seek to provide care/comfort covered by insurance and Medicare treatment in their last few weeks.
While we work closely with these organizations, we aim to provide the care often perceived as luxuries that have been proven to alleviate pain in children such as massage and Reiki therapy.
Doesn't insurance cover alternative pain management therapies?
Question #2
Why not just use narcotics or opiates to ease a child's pain?
What makes you different from other children's palliative care organizations?
Make an impact on the lives of children with terminal or chronic illness.
100% of donations fund our Complementary Pain Management Training Programs
