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Seriously ill children at the Clinical Center will now have the opportunity to take their friends and in some cases, their nurses home with them.
America Online and Dell Computers have teamed up with Starbright Foundation, an organization dedicated to helping seriously ill children face medical and emotional challenges, in an effort to bring computers into the homes of these children.
During a press conference last month, Steve Case, CEO of America Online, sat with several young patients at the Children’s Inn while broadcasting via videoconference to Los Angeles where Starbright Foundation Chairmen Steven Spielberg and General H. Norman Schwarzkopf announced the joint effort.
“These children have the support while they are at the hospital, but when they go home, they are cut off,” said Schwarzkopf. “But not anymore. Now it doesn’t have to end when they come home.”
Starbright is computer software that is given to a select number of hospitals and allows children to access the private Starbright cyberworld and meet children who are being treated for the same illness, ask nurses about different procedures and share stories. Through the Starbright world, children are able to chat online, email their buddies and compete in games.
“There are kids who are not here for a very long time. Those kids are the ones who will benefit from this partnership,” said Lori Wiener, coordinator of NCI’s pediatric HIV psyco-social support and research program at the Clinical Center.
The Clinical Center is one of 80 hospitals nationwide that has Starbright.
“It’s a place where you can meet people and find out that you are not the only person who has this disease,” said Whitney Wyland, 14, of Altoona, Pa.
Wyland was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a form of bone cancer, and travels to the Clinical Center for treatment every six weeks.
“If you have a stressful day, Starbright takes your mind off of the stress,” he said.
The first phase of Starbright’s expansion to reach children at home begins this month with an upgrade of each hospital’s software to communicate with the Starbright home version.
Once the hospitals have been updated, all eligible children and their families will be provided with free internet accounts from AOL and computers from Dell.
“We are just proud to play a small role in the lives of some very brave kids,” said Spielberg. “We want to give them back their childhood by creating a private world just for them, so for a while they are free to be kids again.”
-by Tanya Brown