Therapeutic Play Gym: Research based intervention for children with medical complexity

Movement is essential to human experience. It is well known that exploratory play during early childhood initiates developmental cascades that lead to improved outcomes in domains such as cognition, language, motivation, sleep, socialization, participation, and self-determination. Each year, 100,000 infants are born in the United States with diagnoses causing severe mobility impairment and lengthy initial hospitalizations. These children experience movement poverty while attempting to play in key developmental positions of supine, side lying, prone, and supported sitting. Although they qualify and benefit from high-frequency inpatient therapy visits, families discharge into an early intervention (EI) system with an 78-87% deficit of pediatric therapists and struggle to access ongoing developmentally supportive care. Presentation Overview: 1) Literature review: • Summary statistics of children with medical complexity • Access barriers experienced by the children and their caregivers • Emerging healthcare models o “On-Time” Mobility Equity o “Health Care Blueprint” (American Academy of Pediatrics) for children and youth with significant health care needs (CYSHCN). 2) Review of the first TPG publication (2024 Pediatric PT Journal) on feasibility and effect of a consultative model of caregiver-mediated home training for NICU graduates with post-discharge access barriers. An outcome measure toolkit for clinicians/researchers and videotaped caregiver feedback will be shared. 3) Introduce the Hospital-2-Home (H2H) concept that won the 2024 APTA Academy of Leadership and Innovation’s “PT Innovation of the Year” competition and share 2-minute video clip. 4) Summary slides will share update on knowledge translation/commercialization, and emphasize the empowerment of caregivers, advancing mobility equity, and promoting independent exploratory play and thriving for children with medical complexity.