Hanako Kitano: Supporting Children Undergoing Long-term Medical Treatment Through the Power of Sports

The TEAMMATES project involves children who require long-term treatment joining a sports team as a member and participating in practice and games regularly. It is a matching project that helps children find a place where they belong within a team, find role models to look up to, regain their self-confidence, and supports the independence of children who have experienced long-term hospitalization and will continue to require medical care.

While living a life of medical treatment and physical restrictions that continue even after discharge, we support them in expanding the scope of their school life, daily life, and future social life by accumulating experiences of finding what they can do while receiving the understanding and cooperation of those around them.

That's right. By letting not only the members of the sports team but also the many people who support the team know about the child's existence, we make it so that even after the activity ends, there are people in their hometown who support them, turning it into an activity that leads to ongoing support.

Yes. The B.League, which is a partner of The Nippon Foundation that supports us, decided to take on this project as part of their social responsibility activities, and it started as a professional sports project.

It is rare even overseas for a professional sports team to engage in a single social contribution activity over the long term. The next was a corporate American football club, followed by the Keio University Athletic Association Baseball Club. Currently, a total of three children are participating.

That's right. When I was studying abroad at a university in the U.S., a non-profit organization called "Team IMPACT" was running a project to match university sports with children undergoing long-term medical treatment. That organization alone has matched nearly 1,500 children cumulatively and operates in over 450 universities across 46 states.

I wanted to bring the activities of "Team IMPACT" to Japan as well.

I actually suffered from an illness myself as a child and lived a life of long-term medical treatment. I loved sports before I got sick, and I continued my treatment with the goal of being able to run once I got better, but I just didn't get well. Every time my doctor or family told me, "You'll be able to run once you're cured," I wondered when that would ever be.

Even if you get better as an adult, the experiences of sports and other things you wanted to do as a child don't come back. That's why I started this activity—because I wanted to support children so that even if there are things they can't do because of illness, their "youth" doesn't suffer from a gap compared to others, and they can spend their childhood with various goals and hopes.

When I thought about supporting children with illnesses to engage with society while undergoing long-term treatment, I felt it wasn't a problem that could be solved just by studying medicine or nursing, so I was looking for a place where I could learn from a more multifaceted perspective. Then, a teacher from the in-hospital classroom I attended during my school years told me about SFC.

When I went to the open campus, I heard someone say, "SFC creates the future a hundred years from now," and those words left an impression on me. Also, seeing students vividly presenting their research on social issues they cared about and working hard on them made me want to become that kind of university student.

The biggest thing was that there were various students with various social issues, and even among peers studying health communication under Professor Akiyama, they would talk about a single theme from completely different perspectives and angles. Talking with friends like that was great because I could learn ways of perceiving things that I had never even thought of.

Now, when I'm involved with various people like the B.League, patient groups, and co-medical staff and "collaboration" becomes necessary, I think the experience of doing group work at SFC with peers who had various backgrounds and diverse awareness of issues is proving useful.

Since SFC was not a department specialized in medical care, I wanted to try thinking about issues among people who were more specialized in medical care. I continued my studies regarding my own issues among many people whose backgrounds were in medical care, including doctors.

I went to Springfield College in the U.S. aiming to obtain a certification as a Child Life Specialist (CLS), a professional who supports and reduces the anxiety and psychological stress of children with illnesses and their families when they undergo various medical experiences.

After obtaining the certification, I returned to Japan and worked as a CLS at the Saitama Children's Medical Center. At the hospital, I explained tests and illnesses to children with various conditions, including childhood cancer, according to their age and development. I also collaborated with doctors, nurses, and other professionals to support the creation of environments and opportunities where children could take an active role in doing their best.

Also, because I gained experience as a CLS intern in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) while studying abroad, I was involved in supporting low-birth-weight infants and babies requiring medical care, as well as their siblings, as one of the few NICU CLSs in Japan at the time.

Even now, I am involved as a CLS in terms of how to clearly communicate the anxieties and challenges faced by children joining teams to people in society.

In Japan, there are physical therapists and occupational therapists. While rehabilitation mainly supports functional recovery, recreation specialists support physical, mental, and social independence through recreational activities, ultimately aiming for the self-actualization of those individuals. In several U.S. states, it is a professional qualification that can receive medical fees, just like physical and occupational therapists.

Recreation is not limited to sports; it includes things you like, such as music or cooking. Due to disability or illness, the things people usually enjoy can become restricted. For example, if someone who played sports daily becomes completely unable to do so due to illness, we look for a different recreation of equivalent value to sports together with them.

The etymology of recreation is "re-create," which means creating new value. While you may lose values you previously held due to becoming ill, you can conversely create new values. For example, even if someone who originally liked basketball ends up in a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury, by starting "wheelchair basketball," they can regain the will to live in their individual life and daily routine, or create new value. This is recreation.

Furthermore, recreation specialists work together with the individual through recreational activities to think of methods that suit them—such as how to communicate their illness, disability, and necessary cooperation to those around them in daily life, or how to handle stress and situations when they hit a barrier of being unable to do something—supporting them in facing their illness or disability.

Recreation is an important activity for people to gain connections with society, build physical strength, change their mood, have meaningful time for themselves, and balance daily life for self-actualization. Therefore, recreation is necessary for everyone, not just because someone has an illness or disability.

My best memory is an initiative I encountered when I went for practical training at Blaze Sports America, an organization that is a legacy of the Atlanta Paralympics. It was very impressive to see sports not being used as a competition, but as a way to solve social issues.

For example, with the aim of promoting understanding and social participation for children with disabilities, opportunities are provided to play sports with local able-bodied children. Among them are people with various backgrounds—Black, White, people with gender identity disorder, and so on. Everyone works on sports together.

And when the peers who enjoyed sports together reflect on the activity, issues—ranging from large ones to small individual ones, such as disabilities, discrimination because they are Black, or the fact that they look like a man but feel like a woman—are communicated positively. This experience was very memorable.

By doing sports together, they gain the confidence to challenge new things, and because they did it together as a team, it becomes a breakthrough to break down the walls they previously had and try to communicate what they are thinking. I felt that was amazing most of all when I went to the U.S.

Regarding the children, I think the biggest thing is the increase in the presence of people in society who cheer for and support them. Since families also have various worries, having more people in society who understand them, regardless of the medical or welfare fields, reduces anxiety more than anything and becomes a great support for their life under treatment.

The other day, a child who participated in the B.League came to the induction ceremony of the Keio Baseball Club because they wanted to connect with other friends through this activity. They interviewed the child who joined, and in various ways, I think they gained a lot of confidence, independence, and proactiveness.

Also, their treatment progress is very good; it seems the speed of treatment is three months faster than the average child. We don't know the causal relationship yet, but I hope to be able to evaluate such things in the future.

For the team, by bringing that child in, they think about and take action to do something for this child. So I think the biggest thing is that each player and staff member develops independence, compassion, and an awareness of issues, which improves the team's unity and atmosphere.

This project doesn't work just because one person works hard; unless the whole team knows about it, is conscious of their teammate's presence, and moves together, that child won't feel like a member of the team.

For this Keio Baseball Club induction ceremony, there were voices at first saying that perhaps not everyone needed to participate. But when I told the members of the student project team that the induction ceremony is for the child joining and also for the team accepting that child, and that I wanted them to think about what was best for the team, they said they wanted to participate with everyone. About 160 club members in total attended the induction ceremony.

At a time when sports are attracting public attention toward TOKYO 2020, I hope to continue creating and promoting positive role models in society who realize many possibilities while facing illness or disability, and to leave behind and pass on a community that supports those role models. To that end, I want to continuously increase opportunities and services for social participation, as well as support through manpower and donations, to promote understanding of individuals with illnesses or disabilities.

There are about 250,000 children nationwide who require long-term medical treatment and need support. That is a small population overall, and attention and money are still insufficient. When I started the NPO, I thought I could raise awareness and attention toward that and lift the overall level. Support organizations everywhere are either volunteer-based or lacking funds. However, NPOs provide support in various forms for parts that the national system or hospitals inevitably cannot reach.

It is difficult for a single NPO organization to communicate and get the whole of society to know about such things. But with TOKYO 2020, sports have the great power of communication that athletes and teams possess. By putting it on that and letting people know about these activities and the need for support, I hope that light will be shed on support for children.

Since the children of today will actually create the future, I want to create a society that shares the awareness that not only healthy children but also children with illnesses are among those who create that future.

There are still very few people in Japan who hold the qualifications I have (CLS, CTRS). Since I believe I must educate and create people to expand our activities, my ultimate goal is to produce the same professionals in the field. Also, by engaging in research to evaluate the project, I hope to be able to visualize the challenges in the field and the significance of the activities.