EpicShare Highlights Scottish Rite for Children’s Pediatric Suicide Screening Program

EpicShare Highlights Scottish Rite for Children’s Pediatric Suicide Screening Program

by | Sep 23, 2026 | General News, Press Coverage

Scottish Rite for Children was recently featured by EpicShare for its innovative approach to identifying and responding to suicide risk among pediatric patients.

Since 2021, Scottish Rite has screened patients 10 and older for suicide risk during clinic visits using the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) tool. More than 143,000 screenings have been completed, helping the team identify 88 emergent cases in which a patient was actively considering suicide at the time of their visit.

Although Scottish Rite specializes in pediatric orthopedics and does not have an emergency department or psychiatry department, the organization recognized that a specialty care visit can provide an important opportunity to identify a child who may be struggling. Patients complete the brief screening electronically during check-in, and a positive response immediately alerts Scottish Rite’s behavioral health response team.

The response team includes mental health navigators — licensed clinical social workers who provide suicide risk assessment and immediate follow-up. On average, intervention protocols begin less than five minutes after a positive screening.

Jill West, Ph.D., director of psychology and a pediatric psychologist at Scottish Rite, told EpicShare that the team has come to view suicide screening much like checking a patient’s other vital signs.

“We can’t look at someone and tell that they’re experiencing suicidal ideation,” West says. “We need to screen everybody because we don’t know who’s struggling.”

The EpicShare feature explores how Scottish Rite developed the program, how the screening and response process works in practice and the impact it has had on patients and families.

To read the full EpicShare article, click here. 

Training the Body and the Brain: Preparing Young Athletes for Sport

Training the Body and the Brain: Preparing Young Athletes for Sport

by | Sep 21, 2026 | Sports Medicine

Young athletes rarely have the luxury of thinking about only one thing at a time. During a game, they may be running, tracking the ball, watching an opponent and deciding where to move next, all within seconds.

That connection between thinking and moving is one area researchers at Scottish Rite for Children are studying to better understand how young athletes move and how training may help reduce injury risk.

Sophia Ulman, Ph.D., division director of the Movement Science Lab at Scottish Rite, recently returned to the Right Moves podcast with Dr. Debbie Rhea, EdD., M.Ed., for the second part of a conversation about sport readiness. This time, Ulman took listeners inside the research underway in the Movement Science Lab at Scottish Rite’s Frisco campus.

Studying How Young Athletes Move

The Movement Science Lab uses technology, including 3D motion-capture cameras and force plates, to study movement, loading and recovery. Researchers work with patients at different phases of treatment and rehabilitation while also conducting studies focused on injury prevention.

One area of that research looks at what happens when athletes have to think and move at the same time.

In the lab, an athlete may run forward and quickly change directions . Sometimes, they know which direction they are going in advance. Other times, a light signals the direction at the last second, requiring the athlete to process information and react while moving.

Ulman says researchers have found that athletes’ mechanics can change when they must make that split-second decision.

The team has also added cognitive challenges to the testing, asking athletes to process and remember information while responding to a directional cue. The goal is to better reflect what happens during competition, when athletes are simultaneously thinking about the ball, their teammates, their opponents and the next play.

The research raises an important question: If athletes have to think and move simultaneously during competition, should training prepare them to do the same?

Taking Injury Prevention Beyond the Lab

Scottish Rite is translating that research into practical resources for athletes, parents and coaches.

Physical therapists, athletic trainers, physicians, researchers and community outreach specialists collaborated to develop an eight-week injury-prevention program focused on stability, shock absorption, strength and balance. Designed to be completed twice a week, the program uses exercises supported by existing research on injury prevention.

This summer, 20 local high school athletes from a variety of sports participated in a study at the Scottish Rite for Children Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center to help validate the program. Researchers assessed their movement patterns, strength and balance before and after eight weeks of training.

Instructional videos and resources for the exercises are also freely available, helping bring the work happening in the Movement Science Lab directly to the community.

Helping Young Athletes Prepare for the Game

For Ulman, sport readiness goes beyond strength, speed or maintaining a particular skill. As athletes get older, she encourages them to pay attention to their bodies, recognize when they need rest and recovery and communicate when something does not feel right.

“You have to understand your body,” Ulman says.

She also encourages patients and coaches to seek credible, evidence- based information about training and injury prevention rather than relying on trends they may see on social media.

By studying what happens when the body and brain are challenged together, researchers at Scottish Rite are working to better understand what young athletes need to move, react and compete safely.

To listen to the full podcast, click here.

New ACL Reconstruction Approach Offers Another Option for Young Athletes

New ACL Reconstruction Approach Offers Another Option for Young Athletes

by | Sep 11, 2026 | Sports Medicine

For a young athlete with an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury, choosing the right approach to reconstruction is an important part of the path back to sports and activities.  

Javier Masquijo, M.D., pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Scottish Rite for Children, is introducing a rectus femoris ACL reconstruction technique to adolescent patients in the United States. The technique, which has been used in the adult population in Europe and South America, offers another graft option designed with the needs of young athletes in mind.    

During ACL reconstruction, surgeons typically use tissue from hamstrings, patellar tendon, quadriceps, or iliotibial band to create a new ligament. Different graft options can affect recovery in different ways.  

The rectus femoris technique uses the most superficial portion of the quadriceps while preserving other important structures around the knee. Potential benefits include less impact to the area where the graft is taken compared with traditional full-thickness quadriceps tendon grafts. The approach also preserves the hamstring muscles, which play an important role in knee stability, and may reduce the anterior knee pain that can occur when tissue is taken from the patellar tendon.   

For young athletes working toward returning to the sports they love, preserving strength and function throughout the knee can be an important consideration during recovery.  

Scottish Rite’s sports medicine team is actively studying the technique, evaluating functional recovery, patient-reported outcomes, and complication rates.  

Through this research, the team continues to evaluate approaches to ACL reconstruction with the unique needs of growing and active patients in mind.