The Amputee Coalition announced that Hanger Clinic, headquartered in Austin, Texas, has pledged a $100,000 educational grant to support phase two of the coalition’s Improving the Well-Being of People with Limb Loss program. This initiative seeks to help prosthetists assess and address their patients’ emotional needs.
“Thanks to the generous grant by Hanger, we are able to move into phase two of the initiative,” said Kendra Calhoun, president and CEO of the Amputee Coalition. Phase two will include Hanger Clinics in the dissemination of the program and in an efficacy study to evaluate the impact of the program on patient outcomes and the providers’ confidence in assisting patients with psychosocial adaptation, she said. “These data will provide the basis for pursuit of federal funding for a large, multisite clinical trial.”
Phase one was launched in 2011, at which time the coalition contracted with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, as a research partner to develop an easy-to-use assessment tool and resource brochure. Phase one also included the development of preliminary program materials and implementation of pilot and feasibility studies. Results from the initial feasibility study suggest that both prosthetists and patients found the program materials to be helpful in discussing issues related to emotional well-being, and that the program is easy to implement into the existing patient flow in prosthetics practices.
“Raising awareness and effectively addressing mental health is a critical topic in the United States today,” said Vinit Asar, Hanger’s president and CEO. “We applaud the Amputee Coalition and Johns Hopkins for establishing this important program…. We are very pleased about the benefits this program will bring to our patients and are optimistic about its impact on the profession.”
