March is Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month, including National Cerebral Palsy Awareness Day declared by Congress on March 25th. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, CP refers to a group of neurological disorders that appear in infancy or early childhood and permanently affect body movement, muscle coordination, and balance. It is the most common motor disability in children. In the US, more than 750,000 children and adults live with CP. They go to school, work in public and private sector jobs, raise families, and participate in their communities. Some people with CP may use the support of assistive technology or may have an aide or caregiver to help with some activities. They may also work with rehabilitation practitioners like physical, occupational, or speech therapists to address issues of balance, muscle coordination, and spasticity.
The NIDILRR grantee community conducts research and development to support people with CP across the life span. Current projects range from health and function projects like physical therapy for infants and toddlers to cool projects on robotics and brain computer interfaces for communication technology:
- Dynamic Supported Mobility for Infants and Toddlers with CP
- Targeting Sedentary Behavior Reduction in Adults with Cerebral Palsy Using a Real-Time Behavioral Intervention.
- Real World Testing of a Brain-Computer Interface to Operate a Commercial Augmentative and Alternative Communication System.
- Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Patient-Centered, Home-Based Technologies to Assess and Treat Motor Impairment in Individuals with Neurologic Injury.
- Technologies to Evaluate and Advance Mobility and Manipulation (TEAMM) Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center.
These projects continue a long history of NIDLRR-funded research in interventions and technologies to support the independence of people with CP. You can browse through more than 30 years of project descriptions in the NIDILRR Program Database and review more than 220 abstracts of research publications from these projects indexed in the REHABDATA database.
Are you interested in research in CP? Besides NIDILRR-funded research publications, REHABDATA also has abstracts for more than 1,000 research publications on CP from other sources and from international research institutions. We ran a few sample searches to help you narrow the field a bit:
- Research on CP published in the last 5 years
- Research on CP in children published in the last 10 years
- Research on CP and communication or augmentative and alternative communication
- Research on CP and physical therapy
- Research on CP and mobility
Looking for more? Our information specialists are ready to help you with your literature search. Contact us today!