Feature Article July 08

July 28, 2008 - It can happen to your family and it can happen in an instant. If your child has a life-threatening illness such as chronic asthma, cancer, HIV/AIDS, leukemia, diabetes, sickle cell disease or cystic fibrosis, you and your child will have someone in your corner. Whether your child is a toddler or a teen, the Starlight Starbright Foundation will be there.

Starlight Starbright (www.starlight.org) brings together experts from pediatric health care, technology, and entertainment to create programs that educate, entertain and inspire seriously ill children. From Fun Centers to Hospital Happenings to Starbright World to Starlight Sites, the white-walled world of illness becomes less scary, less painful and much less lonely.

There are more than 180,000 children each month who are served by the Starlight Starbright programs. And in the words of the Foundation itself, they are both ‘high-tech’ and ‘high touch’.

Six of the ways the Starlight Starbright Foundation helps sick children are their great games. All of the games are free and readily available to play online:

• ‘Quest for the Code’ was funded by an independent educational grant from GlaxoSmithKline and features celebrity voices from Gwyneth Paltrow to General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. A character named ‘Cyrus’ informs children about asthma and helps them avoid a variety of asthma triggers, markedly increases a child’s knowledge about asthma and willingness to change lifestyles
• ‘Sickle Cell Slime-O-Rama’ helps children learn to prevent more severe pain episodes, talk about their pain to adults, and have a more positive outlook about themselves and their future. Slime your host, Morris Malone, when you answer questions about sickle cell disease correctly. And don’t forget the extra slime balloons!
• ‘Radiology Center’ answers questions about M.R.I.s, CatScans and X-rays. Click on a patient to find out why they’re in the doctor’s office and what happens when they take each test.
• In ‘The Bone Marrow Quiz’, you answer questions about bone marrow and get a short audio explanation.
• ‘Living With Kidney Disease’ is an online interactive ‘magazine’ (that looks and reads like a real newsstand magazine!) with topics like food choices, advice from teen experts, ‘dialyzing with style’ and more
• ‘Get Fit, Get Right’ is an interactive online magazine format introduced by Randy Jackson, with blogs, videos, success stories, fitness coaches and an online community.

In addition to online healthy games, there are now more than 5,000 portable Fun Centers, featuring the Nintendo Wii, a flat-screen television, a DVD player and a selection of Wii games. Nintendo of America has been one of Starlight’s most dedicated partners for 16 years.

Hospital Happenings are morale boosters that bring the party to the patient. These include movie nights, clowns, game tournaments and other special events. Parents, brothers, sisters and other pediatric patients are all welcome.

Starbright World connects seriously ill teens in an online social network. A teen’s social life is one of the most important things in their world. They can feel isolated and alone when hospitalized and Starlight World is an online community lets them know there are other young people throughout the world going through the same thing.

Starlight Sites are playrooms and social areas in hospitals that provide a place to play and escape the daily discomforts of a hospital stay. There are games, toys, crafts and, of course, other playmates. And no doctors in white coats allowed!

More than anyone, the Starlight Starbright Foundation understands what a child and a family go through during an illness. And they and their volunteers dedicate themselves to distracting children from their pain, helping them better understand and manage their illnesses, and connecting families with others.

In the words of one mother, “You brought back a normal time to my family; after we have been through so much it is hard to remember what normal once was.”

Check your regional chapter of the Starlight Starbright Foundation for fund-raisers, such as fashion shows, golf tournaments, bowling events, Western evenings and more. To make a donation today, visit www.starlight.org/donate.