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Melanie Cole (Host): Welcome to UAB Med Cast. I'm Melanie Cole, and joining me today is Dr. Johan Latorre. He's an assistant professor and specialist in sports medicine at UAB Medicine, and he's here to highlight the benefits and barriers of adaptive sports. Dr. Latorre, it's a pleasure to have you join us today. I'd like you to start by kind of giving us a working definition of adaptive sports. What does that look like? What are they?

Dr Johan Latorre: Hi Melanie. Well, thanks for having me here. So simply put, adaptive sports are just sports that, whether at the recreational or competitive level, They're created for individuals with disabilities, and I think that's important, especially, you know, as we all get older, we all start getting some disability of some sort, whether it's be, simple osteoarthritis or a traumatic event that may have happened throughout our lives. So adaptive sports, allows pretty much everyone to be able to participate and be active.

Melanie Cole (Host): So we're talking about adaptive sports, but obviously you're a specialist in sports medicine. What kinds of physical disabilities do you mostly see in the kids that you work with and the adults as they are looking to get into some kind of physical activity?

Dr Johan Latorre: So for me, my general sub-specialties PMR, so physical medicine, rehabilitation. So I'm able to see a lot of different patients, who have either disability that they were born with, such as kids or adults with, spin bifida or cerebral palsy. Or adults who may have had a traumatic event occur in their life and they may have a spinal cord injury or a traumatic brain injury, and acquired their disability when they got older. So these are the different types of conditions that we normally see individuals that participate in adaptive sports.

However, osteoarthritis, something is very prevalent as we get older. Probably makes up the bulk of my practice, as a physician and as that arthritis progresses, it makes it a lot more difficult to be able to participate in certain sports or activities due to the demand such as, for example, in running. So adaptive sports, is also available to them and I've seen many individuals take advantage of that and be able to play basketball and not have their knees hurt essentially by being able to play wheelchair basketball.

Melanie Cole (Host): Yeah. That's so cool. What a great profession you're in. As far as the benefits when you think about what you do for a living and the joy and the feelings of fitting in normalization that you are giving to these kids and adults, tell us some of the benefits that you see when people participate in these adaptive sports?

Dr Johan Latorre: I'm glad you touched upon self-confidence and mental wellbeing and things like that. Cause I think that's, Big thing that we don't normally associate exercise slash sports with, but most of these, activities, require you to be in a team or be playing against other groups of people or individuals, etcetera. So you're able to create a community there. So that improves, the athletes and, the individual's confidence, their leadership skills, empathy, acceptance. All these types of things. In addition, we all know that anyone in the sports exercise realm, that just any type of exercise helps with, a lot of mental health, whether it be decreasing your risk of depression, anxiety, stress improves your self-esteem.

So that's super important on top of all the benefits we know of just general exercise, right? It's gonna improve your heart health, your brain health. It helps with trying to reduce your risk of many different types of cancer being a healthy body weight, which also prevents chronic disease. And on top of that, depending on your disability, you may have different deficits with balance, for example, or bone strength. So being able to participate in sports is gonna help you work on these things while having fun.

Melanie Cole (Host): Certainly and for other providers that are really telling their patients and their patients' families about the importance of participating in adaptive sports, tell us a little bit about the program that you run and who can participate in adaptive sports at UAB? Can able bodied individuals participate because as they wanna refer their patients to these programs, this kind of information is so important for them to have?

Dr Johan Latorre: Yeah, so at UAB we're very fortunate to be, partnered with the Lake Shore Foundation. And so the Lake Shore Foundation is a great organization that provides, exercise and adaptive sports to the community so that. If you have a disability, you're able to come and go to a location where you know that they're gonna have a ton of different options for you. Whether you wanna play a sport or simply just exercise. So that would be, the premier, location essentially for adaptive sports in our area. And they have a multitude of. sports that they offer. So, for example, they have rugby, they have different, events that they'll have like for tournaments, throughout the community.

And on top of that, there's such a great facility that they're also a Paralympic training site. So it's really cool to be especially a young person being able to start off on your journey of playing sports, knowing that, you have paralympic medalist training here, playing sports here, and winning gold medals eventually. So I think that's really inspiring as a young person just starting out in sports to be able to train where the pros play essentially. So that is really cool. At UAB, the university currently we have different programs in the university that they can have.

But there's no specific thing that's been created yet for athletes at the collegiate level. And now that I've started at UAB, my goal is to hopefully be able to create that, just as, I was able to help out with, at the University of Michigan, who now has a very robust, adaptive sports at the collegiate level with track and field basketball and tennis as their current sports that they offer. So hopefully in the future, if you're a young person thinking of college, we'll be able to, offer some sports for you at the collegiate level so you can continue progressing in your career.

Melanie Cole (Host): Wow, that's so great and we're so lucky to have you at UAB now. If a child uses leg braces, a prosthetic, a cane, a walker to get around, tell us about some of the barriers that you've seen, whether it's osteoarthritis in an older person or a child that has been born with one of these disabilities. Tell us a little bit about the barriers and remember that you're speaking to other providers, so how are you helping these patients with those barriers? Again, those providers are able to impart this information. What a great program.

Dr Johan Latorre: The big thing that I think providers should know is simply be aware that adaptive sports exists. Knowing that they exist is maybe half the battle simply because a lot of, especially younger children, young adults who wanna be active, wanna know where they can perform different sports, different exercises, and knowing where a location is makes it a lot easier, for you to send them. And at that location they can figure out what to do essentially. And what sports they're able to participate and figure out which one they enjoy the most and have the most fun.

But once we get there, a lot of these sports require specialized equipment that is very expensive. So for example, a wheelchair for tennis can cost up to 10 grand just to have the most modern, lightweight, best chair you can get. And those little bits, make a difference for the able bodied equivalent would be getting. soccer cleats or basketball shoes that are better made versus getting something that's heavier and will make you slower. So as you can imagine with a wheelchair costing the price of, a used car, sometimes even a new car, then that's a huge burden on the families.

So being able to send them to a physician such as myself, who knows different, locations and online where they can apply for different types of grants to help, offset this cost burden is very important. On top of that, transportation is an issue. We're fortunate that if you're a UAB provider, we have Lake Shore that's nearby. But knowing at least a little bit about what other places, around the communities offer is also a great way to. Have, your athletes try out new things? So for example, here in Alabama we have things here in Birmingham, but there's also things in Tuscaloosa, thanks to the University of Alabama.

Who has a very robust, adaptive sports program over there as well, who are doing very well at the collegiate level with multiple national championships in wheelchair, tennis and basketball. So transportation is an issue. So trying to, address those barriers, is simply just. Being able to network and know where to send people, where they can then get more information. and then lastly, I probably want to touch upon a little bit that, it's difficult as a caregiver, especially if it's an older adult or maybe they have a disability that makes it difficult to drive.

So being able to sort of address these needs with the caregivers is very important. When you do send them to us, to PMR sports, that we're able to know what barriers they come in with so we can help address those as best as possible, such as through grants and different types of things like that.

Melanie Cole (Host): Wow. What an excellent, comprehensive program. Thank you for laying all that out for us. Dr. Latorre, as we wrap up, I'd like you to just summarize for other providers when you want them to refer their patients to the specialists in physical medicine and rehabilitation at UAB Medicine and why it's so important that they encourage their patients to get involved in adaptive sports?

Dr Johan Latorre: So I think our role as providers is to realize that, exercise sports is medicine. With an obesity epidemic that's, affecting everyone, people with disabilities, able bodied, individuals, et cetera, we can do better as providers to try to promote exercise. So just to give you some numbers, nationally, about a quarter of able bodied individuals do not get any physical activity, and that number increases to 50% if the individual has a disability. So that is a huge amount of people who are not participating in any kind of physical activity, on a national level. And we can do a lot to affect that. And we can think of all these downstream effects that we can have with chronic illnesses down the line.

And if we can instill these good habits when they're younger, even better. So, that's the first thing. Us as should always promote exercise. And if you have someone with a disability, and especially if they're eager to be more active, I think that's a great, opportunity to then send them over to PMNR Sports to just discuss different opportunities, different needs they may have different questions that they may have as to how we can best, integrate them into the adaptive sports community so that they're able to exercise and have fun with a whole bunch of different new people who have similar experiences to them as well.

Melanie Cole (Host): Thank you so much Dr. Latorre, for coming on and telling us about this wonderful program, so Inclusive and a physician can refer a patient to PMNR Sports at UAB Medicine by calling the MIS line at 1-800-UAB-MIST, or by visiting our website at uabmedicine.org/physician. That concludes this episode of UAB Med Cast. I'm Melanie Cole.