In 2021, a group of healthcare professionals astutely identified a significant disparity between the well-intentioned efforts of healthcare institutions and the insufficient support provided to frontline workers contending with the relentless challenges of daily trauma and medical emergencies, including the additional burden of stress and burnout exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Recognizing how difficult this is to achieve, Founder and Executive Director, Karla Pérez-Solórzano began exploring ways to address these needs. “My passions for emergency medicine, stress management, and holistic care have provided me the good fortune to be a part of the Emergency Department family at The University of Kansas Health System. Our staff have felt the result of stress and burnout. We are susceptible to the physical and emotional toll that comes from being a patient-centered, healthcare provider. With my fellow colleagues, we were inspired to develop the Emergency Department Wellness Committee to support our staff.”

Karla and her colleagues were able to increase visibility and build a culture of appreciation by hosting livestreams such as “From Burnout to Breakthrough” which highlighted the need to pause and refuel, circulated Monday Motivation on social media to inspire the staff, organized creative ways to promote wellness by launching Wellness Challenges, advocated for funds to create a Wellness Cart that provided motivational messages, refreshments, and healthy snacks, and sought sponsorship from the ED supervisor to approve gift card raffles for massages, floating experience, and facials from local businesses to provide a way to refresh and refuel. The current practices and limited resources within existing hospital settings fall short of the true need of these frontline caregivers. Drawing from the ED Wellness Committee experience, the idea was nourished and expanded to become a separate 501c3 that offers services and resources throughout the Kansas City area.

Through the generosity of start-up and capacity funding from the Health Forward Foundation, Kansas Health Foundation, and the Kauffman Foundation, Healing Heroic Healers (H3) began to give back to frontline healthcare workers through their wellness and holistic programs in the Spring of 2023. H3 began providing wellness and holistic services through their network of committed partners. They have launched their Wellness Cohort Program, targeting high performers to prepare them to better assist the community. Additionally, H3 sees that its work also can impact systems changes in our healthcare community by being a voice for and a connector for these frontline workers.

In April of 2023, the H3 board convened to finalize their mission, vision, values and goals. Key to that discussion and development of future capacity building plans were discussions around the success of the inaugural programming, essential partnerships needed, and best ways to engage the community. Recognizing that the mission of H3 is unique, leadership continues to take ownership of the need to both be a voice for under-served and under-recognized front-line healthcare workers and to further develop a service model that supports their physical and mental wellness. Learning and practicing self-care remains at the heart of their mission and work.