Hope for Healing Presents Grant: Funds to be Used for First Aid Kits for FD Schools - from The Messenger

When Kristin Kuhlman died following two liver transplants to treat hepatopulmonary syndrome in June 2017, her parents, Roxanne and Randy Kuhlman, didn’t want her memory to fade.

Kristin Kuhlman was a 2011 graduate of Fort Dodge Senior High and a 2015 graduate of Iowa Central Community College, where she studied nursing. She was just 24 when she died.

Shortly after Kristin’s death, her parents developed the Hope for Healing Fund with the mission to provide financial support for children, teens and young adults who are facing serious health issues and other emergencies.

“She had a big heart and she loved to help people,” Roxanne Kuhlman said. “She had a tender spot in her heart for people of all ages and those especially that were medically fragile like she was.”

Roxanne Kuhlman said they also envisioned the fund helping young nursing graduates take their board exams as well as supporting other community needs.

Recently, they received a request from Steph Anderson and Kirsten Doebel, the directors of elementary and secondary education for the Fort Dodge Community School District.

“The (district) nurse team came to Kirsten and I and were really inquiring about if we were to have either a community or school emergency that they would really like to purchase some first-aid kits that were similar across the district so that they could all respond simultaneously and respond with the same materials and know what was in those kits,” Anderson said.

Roxanne and Randy Kuhlman, joined by their son, Joe, presented the district with a grant to fund those first-aid kits during the school board meeting on Monday evening.

“We’re very honored and pleased that we have this request from the community school district here,” Roxanne Kuhlman said. “It means a lot to us that you reached out, and it’s such an important cause.”

Roxanne Kuhlmann said she believes that her daughter, who worked as a nurse at Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids before she fell ill, would approve of this donation.

“I think this is something that Kristin would really say this is great to be able to have a coordinated effort with these first-aid kits,” Roxanne Kuhlman said.