Dr. Bhooma Aravamuthan says she fell in love with treating children with cerebral palsy (CP) as an undergrad.

Previously, she had been drawn to adult neurology. Her uncle had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and Aravamuthan, now Assistant Professor in the Division of Pediatric Neurology at Washington University in St. Louis, had been keen to pursue that field of medicine. But working with younger patients gave her new insight.

“My DPhil (PhD) was on studying deep brain stimulation targets for Parkinson’s disease in people and in rats,” she says. “When I started med school, I was convinced I would be an adult movement disorders physician conducting Parkinson’s disease research. Then I just fell in love with working with kids.”

The more she worked with children with CP, the more Aravamuthan saw a need for committed clinicians dedicated to enhancing the field of research.

“I felt I could best contribute there,” she says. “CP families are so savvy: they have so much to teach everyone they interact with. Yet, we paid them very little attention from a research perspective and had a limited amount to clinically offer them. I felt that, given my background, this was an area where I could make a difference.”

Ask Aravamuthan what she loves most about her job and she’ll reel off a long list. “I love the kids, I love the parents, I love my colleagues,” she says. “Caring for people with CP is a team sport – every day I feel like I’m part of a big team of people trying to achieve a shared goal.”

As a physician-scientist, the dynamic doctor spends much of her time in the lab advancing research into dystonia, a disorder that causes involuntary muscle contractions, abnormal postures, and involuntary muscle contractions and is prevalent in patients with CP.

“My lab uses machine learning techniques and targeted neural circuit manipulation in mice to understand what causes dystonia after neonatal brain injury,” she explains. “We try to develop techniques to optimize dystonia diagnosis in people with CP and apply these techniques to mouse models of disease.

“I love forming longitudinal relationships with kids and families and watching these kids grow and gain skills over time. I love providing families diagnostic clarity and letting them know about what treatments we have and how much we still have left to do.”

Her warmth for her patients was only enhanced when she became a mother herself. As well as leading the way in CP research, Aravamuthan is raising three young children – including twins!

“I think becoming a mother has helped me better relate to my families and given me a better understanding of how their specific goals and hopes for their child should drive my medical care and my research,” she says.

“Before I had kids, I asked my clinical mentor during Pediatrics training whether being a doctor made it easier to be a parent. She told me: “No, but being a parent made me a better doctor”. I think that’s true for me as well.

“My twins were born at 33 weeks and spent just over six weeks in the NICU. After that NICU experience, I spent a long time trying to reclaim what my perception of a “normal” motherhood was. But that doesn’t exist. I stopped trying to view my patients and families through that lens. Instead of helping them achieve what I assumed they wanted to achieve, I’d ask them about their goals and priorities.”

One such priority is the need for families to feel supported and heard as they transition away from childhood neurological care into adulthood.

“In medical school, you go on your pediatrics rotations and you see children with all kinds of chronic illness and then do your adult rotations and wonder, what happens to all those kids I saw last week when they grow up?” she says. “For CP, finding adult-trained providers willing to care for people with CP is tough. Because the lack of exposure to childhood-onset chronic illness is rampant even at the very beginning stages of clinical training, there is a lot of reticence to take on a population of people you don’t know much about. This is an issue that really needs to be fixed during training – there’s a huge pipeline problem.”

Day to day, Aravamuthan works closely with other key figures in CP clinical care with the shared desire to improve evidence-based medications, therapies, and surgical techniques through rigorous randomized-controlled trials and input from the CP community. She cites the CP Research Network as a key component of this goal as the network brings together a “supportive network of people interesting in improving the lives of people with CP across all disciplines.”

In 2020, she became the vice-chair of the Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities section of the AAN where she is working to educate adult neurologists about the need for ongoing care for people with CP.

As she continues her critical work, Aravamuthan is optimistic that with advocacy, research, and effort, the culture can be changed. “People realize that increased CP research across the lifespan, in particular in dystonia, is important,” she states. “Time will tell on the follow-through in terms of grant dollars and the clinical prioritization of CP clinics across the lifespan.

“Advocacy is critical for what we do. A lot of the lack of focus on CP is because people still think it’s a “wastebasket” diagnosis. They don’t see the clinical impact of it, the faces of the people who have it, or the fascinating research questions in CP waiting to be addressed. I had no idea that advocacy would be a part of my job, but it’s such a gift to be able to introduce someone to what an important topic this is.”