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Center for Engagement in Disability Health and Rehabilitation Sciences

Center for Engagement in Disability Health and Rehabilitation Sciences

Pilot Funding

Advancing Health and Wellness in Adults or Children with Disabilities

FY 2026

CEDHARS is pleased to announce the recipients of its spring 2026 pilot grant funding opportunity, “Advancing Health and Wellness in Adults or Children with Disabilities.”

CEDHARS’ overarching mission is to advance scientific discovery, translational research, education and engagement in the fields of disability health and rehabilitation sciences. This pilot program aims to support the advancement of disability health research, and this specific funding cycle aimed at advancing innovative research to improve the health and well-being of adults and children with disabilities. Funding is intended to support new projects or expand existing initiatives to incorporate a disability component, generating critical data to bolster subsequent external funding applications.

Applications were highly competitive and were peer reviewed using the NIH scoring framework. Five proposals were chosen for $35,000 of funding. To learn more and read the abstracts for each of the projects, click on the links below:

  • Ashley Wright: “Validation of a Cardiorespiratory Fitness Teleassessment for Young People with Mobility Disabilities: The 2-minute Punch Test”
  • Ahmed Qasem: “LLM-Enhanced Prediction of Readmission Risk Among Hospitalized Patients with Disabilities”
  • Lauren Luther: “A User-Informed Digital Therapeutic for Specific Cognitive Disabilities to Improve Mental Health in Schizophrenia and Related Mental Illnesses”
  • Chris Hurt: “Investigating the increased risk of falls in individuals with Parkinson’s disease treated with deep brain stimulation"
  • Chris Ballmann: "Effects of active versus passive music therapy on functional ability and psychophysiological responses to goal-directed exercise in people with Parkinson’s disease"

Validation of a Cardiorespiratory Fitness Teleassessment for Young People with Mobility Disabilities: The 2-minute Punch Test

  • Principal Investigator: Ashley Wright, Clinical Research Coordinator, UAB/Children’s of Alabama Division of Pediatric Rehabilitation
  • Co-Investigator: Dr. Byron Lai, Assistant Professor, UAB/Children’s of Alabama Division of Pediatric Rehabilitation

There are no established teleassessment methods to examine cardiorespiratory fitness among people with mobility disabilities. This study aims to validate a novel 2-minute seated punch test (2SPT) as a remote and accessible alternative to a gold standard, arm bike graded exercise test (GXT). The 2SPT would be delivered remotely with individuals in a seated position, offering an alternative for people who are non-ambulatory. The 2SPT is adapted from the 2-minute step test, which has evidence to support its validity and reliability among a variety of populations. Aim 1 will examine criterion validity of cardiorespiratory fitness (VO2 peak) from a GXT and the 2SPT among 30 young people with mobility disabilities. Aim 2 will examine test-retest reliability of the 2SPT. This study’s findings will support scalable tele-exercise interventions by offering an accessible method for measuring cardiorspiratory fitness for people with mobility disabilities.

 

LLM-Enhanced Prediction of Readmission Risk Among Hospitalized Patients with Disabilities

Our central hypothesis is that incorporating SDOH data into structured clinical data will improve readmission prediction and provide a more equitable assessment of post-discharge risk across disability and demographic subgroups. The objective of this pilot project is to develop ML-based models that predict hospital readmission among patients with disabilities using structured EHR data. Next, we will incorporate SDOH data to enhance model prediction. The SDOH data will be extracted from clinical notes using large language model (LLM)-based methods. Our overarching goal is to create equity-informed clinical decision support tools that help identify hospitalized patients with disabilities who need enhanced discharge planning and transitional support. This project is innovative because it focuses on a population that has been overlooked in existing readmission prediction models and utilizes LLM-based methods to capture social risk factors embedded in routine clinical documentation.

A User-Informed Digital Therapeutic for Specific Cognitive Disabilities to Improve Mental Health in Schizophrenia and Related Mental Illnesses

The overall objective of this project is to develop and usability-test a smartphone-based working memory cognitive training DTx for individuals with SZ. This study will generate critical feasibility, acceptability, and implementation data to support future efficacy testing in a NIH R-level grant. Our central hypothesis is that a patient-informed, app-based working memory intervention will be feasible, acceptable, and well-suited for real-world use, providing a foundation for improving real-world motivation and goal-directed behavior in SZ.

This project will yield a scalable, low-cost, patient-informed DTx targeting a core cognitive disability underlying negative symptoms in SZ and related mental health disorders. The resulting pilot data will support a subsequent NIH R61/R33 or R01 focused on testing the efficacy of the treatment. This project will advance treatment development for a key cognitive disability present in a range of mental health disorders and could advance treatment for one of the most disabling and underserved dimensions of severe mental illness.

Investigating the increased risk of falls in individuals with Parkinson’s disease treated with deep brain stimulation

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an effective 2nd line therapeutic strategy for Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients in whom pharmacologic interventions no longer optimally control primary motor symptoms such as rigidity, bradykinesia, and tremor. However, the extent to which DBS improves axial motor symptoms (e.g., postural instability) is equivocal. While some investigations show improved static and dynamic balance measured in the lab, many studies also show that individuals fall at a higher rate compared to those without DBS. Increased incidence of falls reduce participation in the community. Thus, it is important to identify modifiable mechanisms of falls and design interventions that address these factors. However, in many studies investigating balance in PD, DBS is an exclusionary factor. This proposal addresses a major unmet need in PD therapeutics to identify causal factors that increase fall risk after DBS implantation and programming.

Effects of active versus passive music therapy on functional ability and psychophysiological responses to goal-directed exercise in people with Parkinson’s disease

Non-motor symptoms (NMS) are highly prevalent in people with Parkinson’s Disease (PwP) and contribute to disability and diminished quality of life. NMS are rooted in physiological and psychological domains and include emotional dysfunction, autonomic dysregulation, cognitive impairment, and sleep perturbations. Music interventions have emerged as adjunctive therapeutic approaches that may positively modulate NMS. Passive music listening is highly accessible and has been established to improve emotional, autonomic, and motivational state in PwP. In contrast, active music therapy may offer additional cognitive and functional benefits through structured delivery. While evidence supports both approaches for potential therapeutic value for NMS, it is unknown if passive or active music therapy influences non-motor responses differently. We will use psychophysiological monitoring to assess non-motor processes with active versus passive music therapy in PwP. We anticipate findings from this proposal to develop into an NIH R01 proposal and facilitate the optimization of music medicine for PwP.

Read more about past funding grants and recipients.