The National Pediatric Rehabilitation Resource Center (C-PROGRESS) engages in the development of promising techniques that address critical gaps in methods or technology in the field of pediatric rehabilitation. Pediatric rehabilitation research would benefit immensely from more sensitive, valid, and reliable approaches to measuring the emergence of new skills and their use in everyday function. Many tools currently in the new Common Data Elements for cerebral palsy were developed initially for typically developing children. Our C-PROGRESS scientists have been active in developing and validating novel assessment tools, from kinematics to parent reporting tools, and created the first Fidelity of Treatment tools for pediatric constraint-induced movement therapy and bimanual treatments.
Between 2020 and 2025, the C-PROGRESS team aims to do the following to help introduce new techniques to the field:
- Obtain confirmatory documentation of assessment methods for function, skill, and behaviors that go across laboratory and real-world environments. This includes use of kinematics and video-, game-, robotic-, and wearable-devices to supplement traditional standardized tests and systematic methods for establishing clinically meaningful thresholds for gain and losses.
- Standardize modifications and summary scoring methods of currently used tools to allow for greater specificity and for use with children who vary widely in age, severity, and etiologies of neuromotor impairments.
- Advance the development of Fidelity of Treatment measures to provide much-needed documentation of the actual delivery of rehabilitation interventions.
- Explore novel neuroimaging strategies for use as individual biomarkers and as valid, reliable indicators of treatment-induced neuroplasticity.
For more information about C-PROGRESS Techniques Development, please contact Jill Heathcock, Ph.D., MPT at jill.heathcock@osumc.edu.