Community
Recovery from a brain injury rarely ends when the coverage does.
The ‘Kel Strong’ Mabatah Foundation exists for the months and years after that point. HTx Pain Institute supports its work, and we were in the room at the annual fundraising gala.
The Foundation
A scholarship for the part of recovery nobody budgets for.
The ‘Kel Strong’ Mabatah Foundation is a 501(c)(3) founded in 2020. It funds rehabilitation scholarships, advocacy, and recovery assistance for people living with traumatic brain injury — and for the families carrying it with them.
The ‘Kel Strong’ Rehab Scholarship was created in partnership with TIRR Memorial Hermann Rehabilitation and the Memorial Hermann Foundation. It answers a problem the foundation saw first-hand: rehabilitation keeps producing progress long after insurance stops paying for it, is denied, or was never in place.
The scholarship covers therapy and the medical equipment that keeps that progress moving. Recipients are chosen each year, and the foundation reports raising more than $350,000 since 2020.
Support the foundation
Donations, the rehab scholarship, and both annual events are all on the foundation’s own site.
Visit kelstrongfoundation.comIts Founder
Kel Mabatah was a tennis player first.
He reached a top-ten national junior ranking through the USTA system in Texas, played Division I tennis at Purdue and then TCU, and had begun competing professionally when an elbow injury ended it.
In 2014 he survived an attack that left him with a severe traumatic brain injury. He spent a week in a coma, underwent four brain surgeries, and was brought back to Houston, where he rehabilitated at Memorial Hermann and later at TIRR Memorial Hermann Rehabilitation. He had to relearn how to walk and speak. He still lives with partial paralysis on his right side and continues outpatient rehabilitation.
He plays tennis again. He plays it left-handed.
In 2020 he founded the organization that carries his name, to give other survivors access to the recovery he had to fight for.
How It Raises Money
Two events a year. The tennis is not incidental.
Annual Tennis Day
Kel reached a top-ten national junior ranking, played Division I tennis at Purdue and TCU, and plays again today, left-handed. Supporters, families, sponsors, and volunteers spend the day on court.
Annual Fundraising Gala
An evening bringing together survivors, families, supporters, healthcare professionals, and community leaders. HTx Pain Institute attended.
Dates, tickets, and sponsorship details for both events are published by the foundation at kelstrongfoundation.com.
Why This Cause
We spend our days with people whose recovery outlasted their coverage.
Chronic pain and brain injury are different conditions, but they share a shape: the hardest stretch usually begins once the acute care is finished and the funding runs out. That is the stretch this foundation pays for.
It also sits close to work we already do. We treat sports injuries at every level, and we know what it costs an athlete to lose their sport — and what it takes to get any part of it back.