We were joined on the podcast by Dr. Jennifer Spiric who is a doctor of physical therapy working with the Mann Method Therapy Network. Today's topic was on balance issues in Down syndrome - how common are they and how can we help manage the issues.

For more information on this topic, go to:
https://www.mannmethodpt.com/
https://gigisplayhouse.org/gigifit/
https://adultdownsyndrome.org/resources/balance-and-down-syndrome/

If you would like to suggest a topic for us to cover on the podcast, please send an e-mail to DownSyndromeCenter@chp.edu.

If you would like to partner with the Down Syndrome Center, including this podcast, please visit https://givetochildrens.org/downsyndromecenter.

We are thankful for the generous donation from Caring for Kids – The Carrie Martin Fund that provides the funding for the podcast recording equipment and hosting costs for this podcast.

As parents and caregivers for people with Down syndrome, it can be difficult to know how to interpret research studies. How can we determine if an individual study is something that our loved one should participate in? We are joined on the podcast with Dr. Nicole White and Dr. Laura Cifra-Bean to help us interpret and understand the risks and benefits of research studies.

For more information on current research studies, go to www.clinicaltrials.gov.

If you would like to suggest a topic for us to cover on the podcast, please send an e-mail to DownSyndromeCenter@chp.edu.

If you would like to partner with the Down Syndrome Center, including this podcast, please visit https://givetochildrens.org/downsyndromecenter.

We are thankful for the generous donation from Caring for Kids – The Carrie Martin Fund that provides the funding for the podcast recording equipment and hosting costs for this podcast.

Health is more than just medical diagnoses and lab tests. Dr. Stephanie Santoro joined the podcast today to discuss a new health survey that her team created to assess the health of people with Down syndrome. To participate in this online survey, go to https://redcap.link/DSHM.

If you would like to suggest a topic for us to cover on the podcast, please send an e-mail to DownSyndromeCenter@chp.edu.

If you would like to partner with the Down Syndrome Center, including this podcast, please visit https://givetochildrens.org/downsyndromecenter.

We are thankful for the generous donation from Caring for Kids – The Carrie Martin Fund that provides the funding for the podcast recording equipment and hosting costs for this podcast.

Physical therapists Ginny Paleg, Roslyn Livingstone, and Helen Milligan joined the podcast to talk about their approach to physical therapy in younger children with Down syndrome. They drew upon the published review article that can be found here https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29630564/. They discussed the "6 F-Words" of therapy: fitness, functioning, family, fun, friendships, future.

If you would like to suggest a topic for us to cover on the podcast, please send an e-mail to DownSyndromeCenter@chp.edu.

If you would like to partner with the Down Syndrome Center, including this podcast, please visit https://givetochildrens.org/downsyndromecenter.

We are thankful for the generous donation from Caring for Kids – The Carrie Martin Fund that provides the funding for the podcast recording equipment and hosting costs for this podcast.

Sarah Bookout is a Bilingual Speech Language Pathologist at GraySpeak Therapy. She attended the University of Texas at Austin where she received her bachelor's degree in communication sciences and disorders in 2018 and her master's degree from the University of Northern Colorado in 2020. Her career involves helping those with Down syndrome achieve speech clarity and independence. She has discovered a passion for working with teens and adults with moderate to severe speech and language disorders and uses techniques to improve speech clarity that prepare her clients for improved social skills that enable them to build relationships, pursue jobs, and establish personal interests. Her clients practice functional communication and life skills by targeting executive functioning, short term/working memory, and motor planning. She has a certification in LSVT (Lee Silverman Voice Training) LOUD and uses the program with children, teens, and adults to increase speech intelligibility, sentence length, and vocal confidence through "being loud". Her goal is to help children, teens, and adults with Down Syndrome become independent by using their voice.

If you would like to suggest a topic for us to cover on the podcast, please send an e-mail to DownSyndromeCenter@chp.edu.

If you would like to partner with the Down Syndrome Center, including this podcast, please visit https://givetochildrens.org/downsyndromecenter.

We are thankful for the generous donation from Caring for Kids – The Carrie Martin Fund that provides the funding for the podcast recording equipment and hosting costs for this podcast.

Dr. Jaclyn Ford is a Research Assistant Professor in the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory (https://Bclearningmemory.com) in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College. Her research examines the effects of emotion and social relevance on memory retrieval processes, focusing on how individual differences in retrieval goals and context may modulate these effects. She utilizes behavioral and neuroimaging methods to characterize these changes in an attempt to better support memory retrieval in individuals with memory impairments.

If you would like to suggest a topic for us to cover on the podcast, please send an e-mail to DownSyndromeCenter@chp.edu.

If you would like to partner with the Down Syndrome Center, including this podcast, please visit https://givetochildrens.org/downsyndromecenter.

We are thankful for the generous donation from Caring for Kids – The Carrie Martin Fund that provides the funding for the podcast recording equipment and hosting costs for this podcast.

The National Down Syndrome Congress (NDSC) is having a Policy Summit September 29-30, 2026 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel and Capitol Hill in Washington DC. And YOU are invited to be there! NDSC Policy Team members Heather Sachs, Jawanda Mast, and Adrian Forsythe joined the podcast today to talk about this amazing event.

For more details on the Summit, go to https://ndsccenter.org/policy/ndsc-down-syndrome-policy-summit/.

To join the National Down Syndrome Advocacy Coalition (NDAC), go to https://ndsccenter.org/policy/national-down-syndrome-advocacy-coalition-ndac/.

If you would like to suggest a topic for us to cover on the podcast, please send an e-mail to DownSyndromeCenter@chp.edu.

If you would like to partner with the Down Syndrome Center, including this podcast, please visit https://givetochildrens.org/downsyndromecenter.

We are thankful for the generous donation from Caring for Kids – The Carrie Martin Fund that provides the funding for the podcast recording equipment and hosting costs for this podcast.

Drs. Jay Nair and Helen Milligan are both doctors of Physical Therapy at Thomas Jefferson University. They joined us on the podcast today to talk about the concept of a Central Neural Drive and how this impacts people with Down syndrome. They are conducting a study on this topic and are looking for participants. For more information on the study, contact Dana R. Johnsn at nairlab@jefferson.edu, 215-326-9153.

If you would like to suggest a topic for us to cover on the podcast, please send an e-mail to DownSyndromeCenter@chp.edu.

If you would like to partner with the Down Syndrome Center, including this podcast, please visit https://givetochildrens.org/downsyndromecenter.

We are thankful for the generous donation from Caring for Kids – The Carrie Martin Fund that provides the funding for the podcast recording equipment and hosting costs for this podcast.