Fresh Faces
Professional Purpose Advocate Maggie Baumer, JD, seeks to improve access to care for individuals with limb loss and limb difference
Maggie Baumer, JD
New this year, O&P Almanac features Fresh Faces, where we introduce readers to prominent O&P professionals who are making an impact with their contributions to the orthotics and prosthetics profession. This month, we speak with Maggie Baumer, JD.
M
aggie Baumer, JD, has worn many hats. Baumer, who leads patient advocacy efforts at Hanger, has spent time as a clinical manager, advocate, and support group leader for those with limb loss and limb difference in Massachusetts. She also enjoys the outdoors, writing, acting, and “connecting” people, ideas, and patterns. An attorney licensed to practice law in both New York and Massachusetts, Baumer earned an undergraduate
Baumer (right) and Shelby Luce, MPH, during a trip to the Capitol to advocate on behalf of O&P
O&P Almanac: What brought you to a career in O&P? Maggie Baumer, JD: I love O&P! My own experience of traumatic injury and recovery introduced me to the field. In 2012, my left (nondominant) arm was crushed at the elbow by a trash compactor in my apartment building and barely made it through intact. After about a month of limb salvage efforts, my healthcare team at Massachusetts General let me know that they had
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O&P Almanac March 2024
degree in clinical psychology. She has served on the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Orthotics and Prosthetics (NAAOP), played an instrumental role as a Certified Peer Visitor for Hanger Clinic’s AMPOWER peer mentoring program, advocated for individuals with limb loss via the So Every BODY Can Move initiative, and served as a legal intern for the Long-Term Care Community Coalition and the New York State Attorney General in New York City.
done all they could to save my forearm and hand, but at that point it was necrotic and needed to be amputated. I’m so grateful to that team for connecting me with a peer visitor from Hanger Clinic’s AMPOWER program, Mike Benning, who also is missing his left forearm and hand from cancer when he was a teenager. By the time I met Mike, he’d lived for decades wearing a prosthesis and was able to show me what it was like to wear one and perform everyday tasks. Meeting him PHOTOS: HANGER CLINIC/MAGGIE BAUMER, JD