photo by Deana Petersen
Like many of his patients, Dr. Christopher Raffi Najarian lives with cerebral palsy.
“I have that experience of what it was like growing up with the mobility challenges that many of my patients share to some degree,” says the pediatric physical medicine and rehabilitation physician at Akron Children’s Hospital. “That helps provide a unique perspective.”
Patients, especially younger children, often feel a connection with Najarian because of his use of a wheelchair.
“Their faces really light up,” he says. “It’s things like that that warm my heart.”
His mobility aid also helps him get active. About eight years ago, Najarian began playing rugby with Adaptive Sports Ohio, a nonprofit that offers community-based sports — such as power [wheelchair] soccer, sled hockey, handcycling and wheelchair football — and interscholastic sports, such as wheelchair basketball, to youths and adults with disabilities. For rugby, he uses a special wheelchair that’s reinforced with a metal frame and protected wheels, which are necessary adjustments for the close-proximity game.
“Rugby is a sport where there’s contact, so the chairs are designed to be able to do that,” Najarian says. “The ball is different than a typical rugby ball — it’s a volleyball — but the main goal is the same.”
Now, he serves on the nonprofit’s board and advancement committee, organizing fundraising events, securing sponsors and more. Adaptive Sports Ohio offers Everyone Plays activity kits for kindergartners through sixth graders, containing sports equipment designed for different abilities — such as a kit featuring various games for children with lower limb disabilities. Najarian helped to distribute information on the kits, which have been sent to hundreds of kids so far — spreading the word about the benefits of adaptive sports to patients.
“For the kids that are involved in Adaptive Sports Ohio, before joining and participating, they may not have known many other kids — or any other kids — with their disability,” he says. “So being able to share those experiences … with each other is invaluable.”
Najarian is focused on serving as many kids as possible — such as a patient who experiences challenges when using one of her arms. She was able to get involved in wheelchair basketball.
“In the beginning, I remember her saying that it was very hard to even move the wheelchair at all,” Najarian says. “She could walk, but playing wheelchair basketball, she had to learn how to even move the chair — but got better and better as she went to practice. … Her mom would tell me about this. They’d come into appointments expressing gratitude about having the opportunity to do something like that, where she had never been able to do that before.” // Cameron Gorman
