Going Green for a Cause: Celebrating National Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month

March 11, 2024 | by sau1admin

March is National Cerebral Palsy (CP) Awareness Month. The goal of National Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month is to celebrate and bring awareness to this condition and to add to funding and research about it. The Cerebral Palsy Foundation's Key Facts tells us that, CP as it's more commonly known, is the most common motor disability to affect children and young adults. Right now, nearly 17 million people all over the world have CP. This number grows a lot every year. The United Cerebral Palsy’s CP Fact Sheet says about 10,000 babies born in the US each year will have CP.

Even though so many people all over the world have CP, you might be surprised to learn that a time to celebrate CP awareness didn’t start until 2006. In 2006, advocates and legislators got together to create Cerebral Palsy Awareness Day and Month

All of March is Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month, but March 25th of every year is Cerebral Palsy Awareness Day. A green ribbon represents CP. If you thought this was because CP awareness is celebrated in the same month as St. Patrick's Day, you'd be correct! As we as disability rights advocates know, raising awareness is the first step to starting a conversation about disability. That is exactly what creating CP Awareness Day and Month has done for people who have Cerebral Palsy.

Now, legislators are talking about CP a lot more. Because there is more awareness of CP, the CDC created the Autism and Developmental Disability Monitoring Network. This group of researchers gathers information about CP and other developmental disabilities. This includes what living with CP and other developmental disabilities is like for people. If you want to learn more about how the CDC is working with other agencies to learn more about Cerebral Palsy, you can check out the full CDC report.

Now that we have learned a lot about the number of people that have CP, let’s talk about what living with CP is like for people.This is a tricky question to answer. Living with Cerebral Palsy is different for every person. For different people, CP includes different body parts and muscles in different ways. If you would like to know more about the kinds of CP, check out this webpage from the Cerebral Palsy Foundation.

The CDC, The Cerebral Palsy Foundation, and the National Institute of Health are currently working together to learn as much as they can about Cerebral Palsy and move the research forward.

So how can you help? Be open to learning about CP and be open to supporting the cause. We here at SAU1 acknowledge Cerebral Palsy awareness. Help us by learning more and advocating for more CP research. And, this March, wear green for CP.