Helping Children and Families Cope with Medical Conditions

Meghan L. Marsac, Ph.D., is a pediatric psychologist at UK Healthcare and has developed a product called the Cellie Coping Kit to help pediatric patients and their families cope with and manage the challenges of dealing with a medical condition.

The Cellie Coping Kit was inspired by some of Marsac’s pediatric patients dealing with cancer. While doing her fellowship training at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), she noticed that many of the families faced similar challenges, but they weren’t given the tools to manage those challenges. While working with kids, Marsac is always on the lookout for a creative way to teach helpful strategies and to empower parents to support their children.

Based on Marsac’s observations, she started out with the design for a stuffed animal. Her aunt, Anne Vinsel, who is an artist and worked in the hospital at the time, created the “Cellie” toy, which she sewed by hand. Once the cards for the kids and the book for the parents was developed, the Cellie Coping Kit came into existence.

Meghan Marsac has a passion for helping children and their families deal with medical conditions. The Cellie Coping Kit is a tool that helps her do this. While pursuing her work at the University of Kentucky, she read an article on OTC executive director, Ian McClure, and decided to enroll in the UKAccel program to determine if starting her own company to sell the Cellie Coping Kit herself would be her best next step.

She decided to go through the UKAccel program, so she could receive guidance for people who have expertise in a wide variety of areas. She believed that the program, which provides a plan over 90 days, would help her move the product forward. She hoped the program would help her better explore the commercialization of the product and help her take steps toward creating a new business model on sustainability.

Meghan said that she learned “innovative approaches on how to present information to a diverse audience and applied those approaches to her work in academics.” She said that the UKAccel program is a great way to add to your skill set, translate science into innovation and move products based in science to market with a manageable time limit. In working with OTC, she said that the staff was very helpful in moving ideas forward.

In speaking about how to make the most of the program, Meghan said “the more you dedicate to it the better the opportunities. Go into it with an open mind regarding the potential new directions. It empowered me to take the next steps and equipped me with ideas to create a sustainable plan to increase our reach to better serve more families with children.”

Meghan graduated from the UKAccel program on April 26, 2019.

To learn more about the UKAccel program, click here.