New Pulmonary and Cardiac Rehabilitation Program To Open on LA BioMed Campus. Only South Bay Program of its Type To Serve Underserved Patients

Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed) announced today that they will open a Pulmonary and Cardiac Rehabilitation Program for patients in the South Bay of Los Angeles in the first quarter of 2016. The program will be located in the National Institutes of Health-funded Chronic Disease Clinical Research Center on the LA BioMed campus. Funding for this new program comes from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (operated by Los Angeles County) and the Pulmonary Education and Research Foundation (PERF). 

For each patient, this new program will consist of two to three visits per week for up to 12 weeks and involve walking, cycling and strength exercises. In addition, the visits will include counseling and education for the patients about their diseases, nutrition, exercise habits, proper use of medications, smoking cessation, behavioral modification and more. The educational and physical training classes will be kept to small sizes to optimize benefits.

“With the many challenges that our fragile cardiac and pulmonary patients face, the timing to have a rehabilitation program begin on our premises could not be better.  These types of exercise rehabilitation programs have tangible and long lasting benefits for the patients and the health care system.” said Dr. William Stringer, head of the new rehabilitation facility. “Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is the third leading cause. A unique feature of our program is that it is the only one in the South Bay that is established for underserved patients who have very limited financial or health insurance resources to help them deal with their diseases. Our new program can go a long way toward profoundly improving their physical, mental and social conditions so they may, by their own efforts, regain as normal a place in the community as possible and lead an active life.”
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center is one of only five level one Trauma Centers in Los Angeles County. The hospital is the cornerstone of healthcare services for more than 700,000 residents in the greater South Bay area.

LA BioMed is a non-profit scientific research institute dedicated to saving lives not only in the greater Los Angeles metro area but nationally and throughout the world. The institute is located on the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center campus. 

The Pulmonary Education and Research Foundation (PERF) is a small, but vigorous Foundation aimed at providing help for patients with chronic respiratory diseases through education and research. The research work PERF has been supporting over the years is internationally recognized. PERF will be supporting this rehabilitation program with essential monitoring equipment, which will improve the safety for the participants.