A visit to the doctor's office can bring anxious feelings. For children, who may not be able to fully express or understand the situation in a doctor's office or hospital, the stress can grow and become traumatic, making necessary treatments, appointments, and life difficult.

Trained as a pediatric psychologist, Dr. Meghan Marsac discovered that children with medical conditions, and their families, seemed to struggle in many of the same ways—getting children to take medication, navigating needle sticks at doctor appointments, and how to discuss illness openly.

"As I was working with families and supporting them and coming up with ideas and strategies of how to manage these challenges, I noticed there were really few resources out there for families to independently seek out what to do and get the help they needed," said Dr. Marsac, who earned her PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Toledo before embarking on a fellowship in pediatric psychology at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She's currently a pediatric psychologist at the Kentucky Children's Hospital and a tenured associate professor at the University of Kentucky.

Her research led to the creation of Cellie Coping Kit. Each kit is packaged in a way to be inviting for children and comes in a bag that includes a stuffed toy named "Cellie," a deck of coping cards, and a booklet for caregivers. Initially, the kit was designed specifically for children with cancer, since that was the focus area of her fellowship, but she quickly discovered there was a greater need.

"I initially just created it to use with my own patients, but once I saw the reaction from kids and families from the tool, I decided to try to expand it further to make it accessible for families to access it on their own and have some support without having the support of a mental health provider," Dr. Marsac said.

While on the surface the kit looks like it's all fun and games, the strategies and guides for how to navigate specific situations included in the cards and guidebook are all backed in research.

"Each card has a specific challenge that we know from research that has been hard for kids with that particular medical condition," Dr. Marsac said. "For example, there's a card for 'I don't like needle sticks' and there's a card for 'I hate taking medication.' On the cards there are specific strategies that they can do to make that a little bit better for themselves and things they can do to make it better for their family.

"After we created the kit based in science, we evaluated it with kids with those medical conditions and their families," she added. "That research shows us that kids and families find the kits very helpful, and they find it easy to use on their own, so they don't necessarily need a medical provider to help them with it. Some of the families have shared with us that it makes them seem more normal, that they're not in this alone, that this is hard for many families."

Benefitting from the assistance of the UK Office of Technology Commercialization and the Launch Blue UAccel program, Dr. Marsac was able to take "Cellie" from a tool she used with her own patients into a company with various kits for different medical conditions.

The Cellie Coping Company, which sells its signature kits through its website and on Amazon, offers kits for cancer (both in English and Spanish), Sickle Cell Disease, food allergy, injury, Eosinophilic Esophagitis, and for siblings of children with medical conditions.

"Each time we create a new kit for a new medical condition, we review all of the literature and all of the science out there," Dr. Marsac said. "We look to the research to see: What have people determined is helpful for kids with cancer? What is helpful for kids with injury? And pull the strategies from the literature.

"For example, we know one thing that is helpful across the board for really short procedures is distraction. So figuring out how you can distract a child during a needle stick and some specific ways that you can do that."

While seeing the product available for purchase on Amazon was a huge milestone for Dr. Marsac, the reviews and feedback she receives from parents and children on the positive impact of her product make all of the hard work worthwhile.

"I'm hoping that as we make these kinds of resources available for kids and families there is a growing recognition of the emotional health needs of kids with medical conditions and around the challenges of medical care," she said. "It's really something that's been overlooked for decades of how hard it can be to navigate the medical world and all of the different procedures.

"People who have experienced medical conditions, when they see something like this they completely understand. But maybe they've never talked about it with anyone, they maybe didn't have the space or didn't have the words to explain what was going on as a child. I think this helps open the dialogue."

By: Erin Shea

Click here to visit Cellie Coping Company’s website

Launch Blue nurtures promising startup founders and university innovators through intensive accelerator and incubator programs. Its funding partners are the University of Kentucky: Office of Technology Commercialization, KY Innovation, the U.S. Economic Development Administration, and the National Science Foundation.