THANK YOU to each and every one of you who sent in stories, placed a marker for your child on the World Map, read and shared the Life After Stroke stories, and “liked”, retweeted and shared our pediatric stroke awareness posts! You helped us reach thousands of people around the world. Because of you, more people now know that strokes can happen in babies, children, teens and even before birth!

While May is over, raising awareness for strokes in babies, children and teens doesn’t stop. We will keep our Awareness Campaign website up and running and we encourage you to continue to read and share the Life After Stroke stories and feel free to leave a comment for the family. Please join the hundreds of families worldwide and keep adding to our Pediatric Stroke World Map. Together we can shape the future for pediatric stroke! 

On May 15th, 2018 Mary Kay Ballasiotes, International Alliance for Pediatric Stroke founder and president, was a panelist and participant in the AEMCC, which was part of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) annual meeting. The overarching goal of this Consensus Conference is to develop the pediatric emergency medicine (PEM) research agenda for the next decade in order to reduce health outcome gaps in the treatment of acutely ill and injured children. Since acute strokes in children and teens is often misdiagnosed or delayed, this was a perfect venue for inclusion of this critical variability in emergency care.

Mary Kay shared the heartbreaking story of Lelaina Jaymes Fitzsimons (Laney), who suffered multiple strokes over the course of a month, but they were misdiagnosed as seizures. By the time an MRI was done, her strokes had caused severe damage to her brain. Stories like Laney’s will be important to include in the write-up of the proceedings from the conference that will be published in the December 2018 issue of Academic of Emergency Medicine.

This conference was funded in part by a PCORI Engagement in Research Project.

Stroke Conference, Friday September 7, 2018
When Stroke Strikes: An Update on the Care of Patients with Acute Stroke
Hosted by the University of North Carolina Comprehensive Stroke Center

The Carolina Nursing Center for Lifelong Learning has a new continuing education program which will include an entire learning session on pediatric stroke! Participants in this program will have the opportunity to learn about a variety of stroke-specific updates, from the new guidelines published by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association to developments in minimally invasive treatments of stroke to the impact of depression on patients after stroke. And because stroke can strike at any age, they will cover stroke across the lifespan, including a special focus on pediatric stroke. Dr. Shelley Dean, owner and founder of Crossway Pediatric Therapy and International Alliance for Pediatric Stroke board member, will be the speaker for the Pediatric Stroke learning session. IAPS will be hosting a table full of our pediatric stroke materials and information.

We hope that this will be the 1st Annual event of such an important subject – please join us and sign up today! For more information and registration please see the When Stroke Strikes conference website.