• Posted August 26, 2026

'True Grit' Program Helps Prepare Kids With Spinal Cord Injuries For Adulthood

A week-long sleepaway camp effectively helps young people who use wheelchairs prepare for adulthood, a new study says.

Rutgers University’s True Grit program is meant to teach life skills and build independence among 14- to 21-year-olds who’ve suffered spinal cord injuries, researchers said.

Their study found the program can promote resilience and self-reliance among these patients, researchers reported recently in the journal Topics in Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation.

“After the program, the participants described significant shifts in how they viewed their futures, which included higher education, employment, independent living and serving as peer mentors,” lead researcher Keara McNair said in a news release. She is a lecturer in rehabilitation and movement sciences at Rutgers University’s School of Health Professions in New Jersey. 

About 1 in every 5 spinal cord injuries in the U.S. occur in young people between 16 and 21 years of age, researchers said in background notes.

“People with spinal cord injuries are getting discharged into the community sooner,” McNair said. “While there are services to help adults return to work, there are no programs in the nation that specifically target the transition to adulthood for young adults. True Grit is designed to bridge that gap.”

Since 2024, True Grit has brought together peer mentors and occupational, physical and recreational therapists to provide counseling and learning experiences during a five-day sleepaway program based in the dorms at Rutgers University-New Brunswick’s Livingston Campus in Piscataway, New Jersey.

For this study, researchers tracked the short-term outcomes among the six young people who participated in the 2024 program.

In addition to individualized occupational and physical therapy sessions, the participants also took part in wheelchair basketball, community outings and workshops that addressed vocational planning, sexuality, adapted driving and psychosocial adjustment to injury, researchers said.

All participants showed progress toward their individual goals at a three- to four-month follow-up, the study found.

“I plan on starting college in the spring and vocational rehab has been amazing providing the help I needed for that,” a participant who provided the pseudonym Ten told the researchers. 

“I’m, like, the only barrier," another participant, dubbed Mamba, said. "But besides that, there’s like, not anything else stopping me.”

Another participant, Miracle, told the team: “The knowledge is more like a personal level, that I realized I can do more things, just like with support and with the opportunity to try new things.”

Researchers hope the True Grit initiative will evolve into a broader model that can support young adults with spinal cord injuries.

“Each year the program grows in size,” McNair said. “We have enrolled 12 participants for 2026, and since this program is unique, participants continue to come from across the nation.”

More information

Children’s Specialized Hospital has more about the True Grit program.

SOURCES: Rutgers University, news release, Aug. 21, 2026; Topics in Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation, Aug. 10, 2026