Defining a New Standard of Care for Children Recovering from Brain Injury

The fundamental driver behind the Pediatric Neurorecovery Clinic is that we believe that state of the art care for childhood brain injury extends beyond the hospital walls. Each year in California, approximately 6,700 children are hospitalized for brain injury including traumatic brain injury and stroke. To put this in context, this is about 14 times the rate of new brain tumors in children. Generating evidence-based practices for cognitive rehab in the pediatric population is challenging for two reasons: brain injuries can occur at any age, meaning this is a very heterogeneous population, and methods of rehab are typically individualized and labor intensive.

From the patient perspective, this absence of evidenced-based programming results in families getting lost in the system after discharge from the hospital. Each school will typically have just about one child per year hospitalized for brain injury. We have seen many families struggle with recovery, and we believe at UCSF can do more to support families and schools.