Dr. Anna McCormick is an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa with Royal College Certification in both Pediatrics and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Presently, she is the medical director of pediatric rehabilitation at The Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and a rehabilitation consultant at The Ottawa Rehabilitation Centre in Ottawa, Canada. Dr. McCormick has a special interest in use of technology in rehabilitation to enable children including; Robot assisted gait training, virtual reality facilitated exercise and artificial intelligence aided early recognition of communication challenges. Other research initiatives of interest have included treatment of hypertonicity in cerebral palsy, transition of young adults to adult care, development of an evidence-based review of acquired brain injury and database development to enable research including the Integrated Neuroscience Discovery Network (CP-Net) and The Canadian Neuromuscular Data Registry (CNDR).
Areas of Research: Rehabilitation, Cerebral Palsy, Neuromuscular disease, Technology
Research Projects
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Impacting the physical activity confidence of children with medical conditions or disabilities: A randomized controlled trial
27/03/2025
Youth with medical conditions or disabilities (MCD) seldom achieve healthy physical activity recommendations. Barriers include a perceived lack of competence, fear of pain/symptom exacerbation, or physical function changes. A 12-week intervention targeting physical activity confidence was evaluated among youth with MCD. The study found that youth who were confident were more likely to engage in physical activity. The in-person intervention increased participants’ activity confidence. The limited impact of the virtual format suggests that implementing new skills with peers is critically important for enhancing activity confidence. Further research is required to evaluate whether confidence gains could be sustained beyond the study intervention, would longitudinally increase activity participation over time, or would transfer to other activity settings.
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A randomized, cross-over trial comparing the effect of innovative robotic gait training and functional clinical therapy in children with cerebral palsy; a protocol to test feasibility
17/01/2023