Bowling for Brains 2020 ~ Take The Leap,

Patricia M Kerrigan PhD

Patricia M Kerrigan, PhD is the Founder of Foundation ThinkAgain. With an extensive background in educational psychology, she is currently the cognitive late-effects specialist for the division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Pediatric Neurosurgery at UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital. Dr. Kerrigan served as a special education teacher for pediatric psychiatric in-patients at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and also at the Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital at UCLA. She earned her Masters degree in School Administration/Special Education at National-Louis University in Evanston, Illinois, and her Doctorate in Special Education at UCLA.

Her primary interest is in the developmental effects of acquired brain injury on the ability to learn. She counsels children as they go through cancer and brain tumor treatment, continually monitors their cognitive, academic and social functioning, and helps them to successfully re-integrate back into school following treatment. Through her work at UCLA, she discovered that her patients were suffering newly acquired cognitive deficits following treatment. Services in schools were limited in their ability to address and remediate these disorders, and medical insurance coverage was limited if available at all.

She created Foundation ThinkAgain to fill this gap in services. These children are now getting the therapies they need, truly celebrating their survivorship, functioning better, and succeeding in their lives after cancer.