Building a Stronger Future for People with Dysgraphia: A New Research Initiative

Dysgraphia—a specific learning disability that affects writing—impacts an estimated 10–30% of children, yet families and educators often struggle to find evidence-based strategies that truly help. While many tools, accommodations, and teaching approaches are in use today, very few have been carefully studied or compared. This means parents, teachers, and even those impacted are often left wondering: What actually works best for people with dysgraphia?

That’s where this new project comes in.

A Community-Driven Approach to Research

The long-term goal of this work is to improve health and well-being for people with dysgraphia of all ages. Unlike traditional research that often starts in academic settings, this effort is rooted in the priorities of the dysgraphia community itself.

Through a community-engaged process, families, adults with dysgraphia, educators, and clinicians recently helped identify the four most important patient-centered research topics. Now, the project team is hosting a series of virtual convenings and workgroups to refine these priorities into specific, answerable research questions.

What the Project Will Do

Over the coming months, the project will:

1. Refine priority research topics into clear, specific questions that matter most to people with dysgraphia and those who support them.

2. Define the right mix of research team members, ensuring that people with lived experience, caregivers, educators, clinicians, and researchers all have a voice.

3. Lay the foundation for future patient-centered research that can test real-world strategies and improve outcomes across education, health, and daily life.

This approach has never been done before for dysgraphia. By bringing together diverse perspectives, the project will help shape research that is both scientifically rigorous and deeply relevant.

What Success Will Look Like

• In the short term, the project will deliver a set of specific patient-centered research questions, draft study ideas, and recommendations for research teams.

• In the medium term (0–2 years), these ideas will evolve into fully developed research projects ready to launch.

• In the long term (3+ years), the goal is to complete meaningful studies that bring evidence-based solutions to people with dysgraphia, their families, educators, clinicians, and policy makers.

Answering Important Dysgraphia Research Questions

People with dysgraphia and those who support them often face uncertainty when making decisions about interventions, technologies, and accommodations. Should certain tools be recommended in school or the workplace? Which therapies improve writing most effectively? What accommodations lead to the best outcomes in daily life?

By focusing on patient-centered comparative effectiveness research (CER), this project will help generate answers to these important questions. The results will provide clearer guidance to families, educators, and clinicians—and, most importantly, will improve outcomes for people with dysgraphia themselves.

A Collaborative Effort

The project is supported by a Research Advisory Board and Expert Panels made up of people with dysgraphia, caregivers, educators, clinicians, and researchers. By combining academic expertise with lived experience, this initiative represents a new model of collaboration—one that places people with dysgraphia at the center of the research process.

👉 Bottom line: This project marks an important step forward. By identifying and refining the most pressing research questions, it will lay the foundation for future studies that bring real, practical solutions to people with dysgraphia and those who support them.

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This project is funded through a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award (EASCS-41745).