UA to Conduct Wheelchair Study in Partnership with Tuscaloosa Schools

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — When Dr. Margaret Stran was fitted for her first manual wheelchair, she remembers her first and lasting impressions: it was heavy, bulky and uncomfortable.

Stran, assistant professor of kinesiology and associate director of The University of Alabama’s Adapted Athletics program, faced an ergonomic issue many people, particularly children, encounter when they receive their first wheelchairs. Whether the chair’s back is too high or its arms too far back, an ill fitted chair can cause poor posture and impact a person’s quality of life, Stran said.

Over the next year, Stran will conduct a manual wheelchair study in which she’ll adjust chairs of students in Tuscaloosa City Schools. The study will be funded by a $21,362 grant from the Christopher Reeve Foundation and will cover the costs of loaner chairs, maintenance tools and clinics.

“The idea is to see what happens when you adjust the everyday chairs with children, in terms of everyday physical activity and quality of life,” Stran said. “The seating specialists … if you don’t use a chair, you don’t truly understand what it takes. That’s not to say all of them don’t, but a great majority do not. They don’t always get how important a little thing like axle position is.”

Stran will be assisted by her UA College of Education colleagues, Drs. Michael Esco, assistant professor, and Phillip Bishop, professor of kinesiology. Together, they’ll start by fitting the children’s chairs with an accelerometer to gauge how much they’re controlling the movements of the chair.

Additionally, they’ll conduct a quality-of-life interview with the students and their parents before making changes in their everyday wheelchair. Changes will include axle position, brake position and removal of unnecessary items.

The students will use a loaner wheelchair while these changes are being made. Then, they will return to their modified wheelchair and their physical activity will again be tracked.

“Along with wheelchair adjustments, we’ll also do clinics on wheelchair skills, like wheelies, jumping curbs and going up and down escalators,” Stran said. “Wheelchair maintenance – especially for kids who start using a wheelchair from birth – they don’t get this. How do you fix a caster if no one has told you how? We’ll customize the toolkits so everyone can do basic maintenance for their wheelchair.”

A final interview will be conducted once the students complete all the clinics.

“I am so excited about this. We have to put people in better chairs.”