Making Headway

About Making Headway Foundation
When a child is diagnosed with a brain or spinal cord tumor, the future is uncertain; families struggle with anxiety and fear. A strong medical team can help the family take its first crucial steps forward. But reconstructing a life and nurturing a family devastated by the emotional and physical demands of treatment and its aftermath go beyond what a medical environment can provide. The whole family needs a special kind of care and support.

How It Began
Making Headway Foundation was established in 1996 by a small group of parents—Maya and Edward Manley and Clint Greenbaum—whose own children had undergone treatment for brain tumors. They found that traditional hospital-based medical programs failed to provide essential humanistic services that enabled a child to reintegrate physically and emotionally with his or her family, school and peer groups. The founders of Making Headway wished to provide other families with what they had found wanting—even with the finest medical care. Thus began a close collaboration with the Hyman-Newman Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery (INN) at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. From the start, Making Headway was conceived as having three main components: