North Brunswick Native Tim Howard Teams Up With Tourette Syndrome Group

U.S. men’s national soccer team goalkeeper and North Brunswick Native Tim Howard and the New Jersey Center for Tourette Syndrome and Associated Disorders (NJCTS) will hold their first leadership academy in August. 

The academy is designed to empower teenagers with the syndrome and associated disorders. Howard, diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome as a child, has put a very public face to the neurological disorder, characterized by involuntary movements and sounds that effects as many as one in 100 Americans.

The leadership academy’s pilot program will take place Aug. 1-3 at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, on the Busch Campus in Piscataway. A group of 23 teenagers ages 14-17 from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York will help NJCTS launch the academy. 

Academy leaders include students from Rutgers’ Graduate School of Applied Psychology, which is home to the Rutgers-NJCTS Tourette Syndrome program. 

Howard, a member of the NJCTS board of directors, has been involved with the center since 2004 and began working on the academy in 2010, when he represented it in the Pepsi Refresh Project, a social-media-driven funding effort. Tens of thousands of fans voted for Tim’s academy concept to win $50,000.

The nation’s first center of excellence for Tourette Syndrome, NJCTS is supported by generous donors and an annual grant from the State of New Jersey. Visit NJCTS.org or call 908-575-7350.