September 1, 2025
CREATE postdoctoral researcher Bethany Sloane recently received what she calls “life-changing funding” for her work to bring mobility aids and choices to children with cerebral palsy and other mobility issues.
Sloane wants children who have trouble moving, walking, and exploring their surroundings to be able to figure out for themselves what kind of mobility aid works for them. Mobility and exploration are known to help children with learning, thinking, social skills, and daily activities, but they are not used enough in therapy programs. Often, therapists and caregivers do not have enough training or they are limited to a single mobility device, such as a walker or a gait trainer.
Sloane aims to create training for caregivers to provide therapy with powered mobility devices. By adding movement trackers, Sloane seeks to accurately and affordably evaluate the benefits and challenges of powered mobility devices in the home. The program will include both GoBabyGo cars and Permobil® Explorer Mini mobility devices.
The NIH K23 Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award will fund the continuation of Sloane’s research for four years. The K23 award provides financial support and “protected time” for individuals considered heading toward a productive, independent clinical research career.
An interdisciplinary CREATE collaborator
Sloane’s path to her CREATE postdoctoral research fellowship has been unique. She has been a practicing physical therapist since 2009. Her doctorate in [Physical Therapy] led to practice in orthopaedics and on to a specialization in pediatrics, and then a pediatric physical therapy residency at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). She is an associate professor in Pediatrics in the OHSU School of Medicine and a physical therapy training program coordinator. She is also the co-director of Go Baby Go Oregon.
“Never would I have imagined that, as a physical therapist, I’d be building accelerometer trackers and attaching them to children’s toys,”
Bethany Sloane, CREATE postdoctoral researcher
As an OHSU Ph.D. student, Sloane worked with CREATE associate director Heather Feldner on another childhood mobility study. That’s where she heard about CREATE’s postdoctoral research program, applied, and was awarded the fellowship for 2024-25, with Feldner as her co-advisor (with Amy Pace in UW’s Speech and Hearing Sciences program).
Sloane presented a workshop on book adaptation at a HuskyADAPT event. She demonstrated adding sensory materials and had students adapt books themselves. For blind and low vision children, high-contrast images are enhanced with rhinestones and pipecleaners. Words and images are matched to assist literacy skills. And additional rhinestones on page corners add space between pages to help children see and manipulate individual pages.
Sloane also collaborates with CREATE associate director Katherine M. Steele and CREATE faculty Kim Ingraham, both UW engineering faculty. She praises CREATE’s collaborative environment that has helped translate her vision to real-world discovery. In a current project, engineers are helping equip 20 mobility devices with low-cost trackers that will gather data about when and how the mobility devices are used in children’s homes.
“Never would I have imagined that, as a physical therapist, I’d be building accelerometer trackers and attaching them to children’s toys,” said Sloane.
Sloane is thankful for support from CREATE and mentorship from Feldner, who “helped me understand the grant submission process in general and the NIH grant process in particular.”
This award is a testament of Bethany’s hard work and growth during her postdoc, and I know this work will set her up for continued research success in the future.”
Heather Feldner, Sloane’s co-advisor and a CREATE associate director
“It’s been an incredible and rewarding experience to mentor Bethany,” Feldner noted, “It’s rare to be able to work with someone who already has outstanding clinical expertise and a genuine eagerness to learn across disciplines, coupled with a remarkable drive to expand access to technologies that empower children through self-initiated mobility. This award is a testament of Bethany’s hard work and growth during her postdoc, and I know this work will set her up for continued research success in the future.”
“My time at CREATE will help move my research forward. CREATE funded my attendance at a conference in Germany and in a UW Global Health course on implementation science, an essential part of my NIH K23 grant work,” said Sloane.