WheeStroll - Group of school children have constructed a special wheelchair pram for disabled dad to take his newborn son out for a walk

Just three months after getting engaged to Chelsie, Jeremy King, 37, underwent an eight-hour surgery for a brain tumour in October 2017 which resulted in impaired mobility.
Before his wife Chelsie King, 32, gave birth, Jeremy King, from Germantown, Maryland, was worried about how he would manage to help her. "This surgery changed our lives drastically and we have worked very hard to accept, learn and overcome those challenged but parenting is a whole new set of challenges.", said Chelsie.

The couple searched for a product to help Jeremy but with no luck. Ex-nurse anaesthetist Jeremy said: "When Chelsie and I did research on devices for disabled parents there were not many things available."
Chelsie then recruited the help of her colleague, innovation and technology lab coordinator Matt Zigler. She asked him if he could design something to attach to Jeremy's wheelchair to allow him to hold their child while on the go. Chelsie said: "He had the idea to throw this to his 'making for social good' class and I thought that was an amazing idea."
They have thus recruited the help of her students at Bullis School in Potomac, Maryland, USA, to design a wheelchair with a child seat attached, and naming it a Wheestroll.
While working on their idea, the school kids conducted interviews with the family and the fire department, who provide infant car seat installation training. To create the pram, they purchased or 3D printed all the parts that were needed, and even borrowed a wheelchair from the school nurse as a prototype. The WheeStroll was completed in time for the baby's birth on March 4th 2021.

Jeremy said: "I was emotional and elated because something like this really increases independence with my child. It has allowed me to experience things that I would not have been able to do. It allows us as a family to have more freedom of movement."
Chelsie said: "Being able to see Jeremy have some independence with our son is a gift. It has given us the ability to do something simple like take a walk as a family; something that a lot of families don’t have to think twice about."

"We hope that people will see this story and know there are ways around their challenges and can build this for themselves at a low cost.

Team "WheeStroll" won two international awards which they were nominated in the PrintLab 2021 make:able design challenge, an assistive technology design challenge for students from around the world. This year's challenge was to design and make a product or prototype that improves the day-to-day life of someone who struggles with mobility in their hands.

Adapted from: https://www.tyla.com/life/wheestroll-kids-invent-mobility-pram-disabled-..., https://www.bullis.org/news-events-media/wheestroll

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