United Cerebral Palsy awarded $60,000 on September 30, 2026, to three research teams working on some of the most stubborn problems in cerebral palsy treatment and prevention. Each team receives $20,000 through UCP's “Change is Possible for CP” Research Grant Program, following a comprehensive review by the UCP Research Council.
The grants target structural barriers that leave children without timely treatment, gaps in medical professionals’ training to care for people with disabilities, and biological pathways researchers might interrupt before cerebral palsy develops. Together, they direct funding toward why so many families still fall through the cracks.
Cerebral palsy affects roughly 1 in 345 children in the United States. More than 1 million Americans and their families live with the condition. Yet the U.S. has no coordinated federal research program for it—a significant gap given the scale of need. Since launching the grant program in 2022, UCP has committed $284,000 to research and innovation across 16 projects. The three new awards extend work that's just beginning to gain traction.
Where Care Breaks Down
One critical failure point is the delay between early identification and actual treatment. Jessica Trenkle, a physical therapist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, will lead a project connecting hospital records with early intervention data to locate those delays. Her research, “Closing the Gap Between Early Cerebral Palsy Risk Identification and Therapeutic Intervention,” focuses on infants identified as high-risk in the NICU who don't promptly receive early intervention services after discharge.
This isn't a small problem. Early identification lets children receive therapy during a critical window of brain development, but that window closes quickly when services don't arrive. Trenkle's team will develop what it describes as “scalable and equitable strategies” to connect kids to therapy as early as possible. Equity matters: without deliberate efforts to reach all families, the poorest and most isolated children could keep missing that window.
The Healthcare Training Gap
Elizabeth Stewart, a researcher at United Ability in Birmingham, Alabama, is taking on a different but equally important barrier: healthcare professionals’ training. Her project, “Changing Perspectives: Preparing Healthcare Professionals to Provide Inclusive Care for Individuals with Disabilities,” tests whether hands-on training with disabled people and their caregivers improves how future doctors, nurses, and other providers care for patients.
The research design matters. Stewart's approach brings trainees into direct contact with people with disabilities and caregivers, and gives them hands-on experience with assistive technology. The goal is clear: greater provider confidence, stronger communication skills, and a deeper understanding of disability-inclusive healthcare. The work tackles a systemic problem in medical education: providers often graduate without meaningful exposure to disabled patients’ lived experience.
Prevention at the Cellular Level
Rafael Galindo, MD, PhD, at Washington University in St. Louis is studying whether stimulating the vagus nerve—the brain-body axis—can reduce inflammation and brain injury in newborns with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE). Insufficient oxygen and blood flow around birth cause HIE, a leading cause of cerebral palsy itself.
Galindo will use a neonatal mouse model to assess whether this approach could inform therapies that improve long-term motor and cognitive outcomes for infants at risk. If the work succeeds, it could prevent cerebral palsy before it develops, a fundamentally different intervention point from managing symptoms after diagnosis.
Closing the Research Funding Desert
Valerie Pieraccini, co-chair of UCP's Research Council and vice president of education and innovation at the Cerebral Palsy Foundation, described the funding gap sharply: “Important questions about cerebral palsy remain underfunded and underexplored despite the number of people and families affected.” She said UCP's program backs research “that might otherwise struggle to move forward,” turning “new knowledge into approaches that can ultimately improve diagnosis, treatment, care, and quality of life.”
Mark Gormley, Jr., MD, co-chair of the Research Council and pediatric physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at Gillette Children's, said the projects address “challenges from understanding the biological pathways that can lead to cerebral palsy, to ensuring children receive timely intervention, to preparing healthcare professionals to provide truly inclusive care.” UCP, he said, is investing in research that turns knowledge into “better care, better experiences, and better outcomes for individuals and families.”
These projects range from prevention to equity to workforce development. Their breadth reflects that cerebral palsy isn't simply a medical problem that a lab can solve. It's a systems problem, requiring institutional change across healthcare, early intervention services, and professional education.
UCP's network of affiliates across North America serves thousands of children and adults with cerebral palsy each year, offering everything from advocacy and therapies to employment support. Five of the 16 grants UCP has funded since 2022 have gone to UCP Affiliates, connecting research funding directly to communities that provide care. With World Cerebral Palsy Day approaching on October 6, the organization is presenting research investment as essential to earlier diagnosis and stronger care systems.
Why This Matters:
These three grants address the consequences of public health systems without coordination, medical education that doesn't prioritize disability inclusion, and research funding that falls short of the need. More than 1 million Americans live with cerebral palsy, yet no coordinated federal research program drives innovation. Families, nonprofits, and researchers must fill gaps the government should address systematically. The $60,000 awarded today won't fix that structural problem, but it shows what could happen if research funding matched the condition’s actual prevalence. Each project focuses on a specific failure point: delays connecting children to therapy, gaps in healthcare provider training, and the biological mechanisms of prevention. For families and individuals waiting for better diagnosis, treatment, and care, the question remains whether piecemeal funding and nonprofit-driven research can replace the coordinated, sustained federal commitment other major childhood disabilities receive.