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Overview |
Mission |
History |
Staff |
Links |
Upcoming Events |
Research Activities |
Educational Activities
The Mission of the Center for Motion Analysis is:
- to collect high quality data to facilitate clear clinical interpretation that
- documents deviations in the gait patterns from normal gait,
- determines the cause of a gait abnormality and
- recommends future treatment such as surgery, therapy or bracing
- to produce thoughtful clinical research which provides objective evaluations of different orthopaedic treatment approaches, as well as a better understanding of the biomechanics of both normal and pathological gait,
- to develop new strategies for processing gait data and producing clinically useful information, and
- to foster a better fundamental understanding of human locomotion by physicians, therapists, and biomechanists.
In addition to this clinical mission, the research and education activities of the laboratory staff members illustrate their enthusiasm for these aspects of clinical gait analysis. The staff has authored dozens of articles and book chapters concerned primarily with the effectiveness of orthopaedic surgery in managing the gait abnormalities associated with cerebral palsy. In addition, dozens of instructional courses have been offered by members from the Center for Motion Analysis that focus on the use of gait analysis in clinical decision making. Of note, the first "East Coast Clinical Gait Conference" was held at the Newington Children’s Hospital in 1985 with 75 attendees informally discussing the challenges of clinical gait analysis. This annual meeting of "East Coast" experts led to a merger with their colleagues from the other parts of the U.S. and Canada to form the North American Society for Gait and Clinical Movement Analysis in 1996. Roy Davis, Ph.D., the Director of the Connecticut Children's Center for Motion Analysis until July 1998, served as the Founding President of this new professional group.
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