Kids Health Matters
Topic: Gait Analysis

"Every step Sophia takes is a testament to the countless dedicated individuals who made it possible," says her mother, Susan Slinkard. Sophia and her family traveled from Arkansas to Minnesota for major neurosurgery aimed at reducing Sophia's spasticity.

There are few moments in life as exciting and anxiety inducing as the day you have your first child, but for Andrew Bailey and his wife, Amanda, things were a bit more complicated. Amanda was home in Connecticut getting ready for her baby shower. Andrew, a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, was in Seattle for an away game.

After two orthopedic surgeries, both informed by gait analysis, Eliza's now pain-free and able to pursue her passion for musical theater and dance.

During his career, pediatric orthopedic surgeon Jim Gage, MD, brought gait analysis into clinical practice and transformed the approach to caring for children who have cerebral palsy. Gage received prestigious national recognition for his work in 2016.

We recently chatted with orthopedic surgeon Tom Novacheck, MD, director of our James R. Gage Center for Gait and Motion Analysis, in honor of the center's 30th anniversary.

For children like Ava who live in greater Minnesota or outside the state, appointments at Gillette can involve hours of drive time and nights spent in a hotel. All that can add up. Meet Ava and learn how Gillette is helping families like hers by expanding its telemedicine services.

For 30 years, Steven Koop, MD, has believed that all of medicine is about "Someone who says, 'Help,' and someone in the other chair to say, 'That's my work. To help you.'"

Born a micro preemie weighing less than one pound, Ava came to Gillette when she began missing milestones. See how far this active 9-year-old has come as a result of treatments informed by gait and motion analysis data.

At Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare, we understand that choosing a fellowship program is a difficult and important decision. So, we sat down with two of our current Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine fellows to talk about how they made their decision, why they ultimately chose Gillette, and having been here, what they think now?

Every parent wants their child to be healthy, but that isn’t always the case. The reality is that as many as one in about 325 parents will have a child who has a complex medical condition such as cerebral palsy, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC also says about one in six children will have some type of developmental disability.

A prestigious NIH grant is helping Gillette's gait and motion analysis research team improve treatment outcomes. “This grant allows us to open up new and exciting avenues of work” says Michael Schwartz, director of bioengineering research at Gillette.