The Live in Motion Foundation named Brian Hafner as its 2026 Pilot Research Grant recipient. Here is what a pilot award is designed to do.

The Live in Motion Foundation has named Brian Hafner, PhD, as the recipient of its 2026 Pilot Research Grant, a $30,000 award supporting research with the potential to advance orthotic and prosthetic care, per reporting in The O&P EDGE.

The announcement arrived three days after the Foundation named Kierra Falbo and Alexis Sidiropoulos as its Early Career Research Grant recipients for the same year. The two programs are operationally distinct. One targets researchers who are forming their careers; the other is designed to do something different, aimed at a different gap in the same underfunded ecosystem.

What a pilot grant is, and what it is not

A pilot grant occupies a specific position in the research funding ladder, and naming that position is more useful than treating it as a generic award.

Large research funding bodies — NIH study sections, VA merit review panels, patient-centered outcomes research programs — generally expect applicants to demonstrate that a proposed study is both feasible and likely to produce interpretable results. The clearest way to demonstrate that is with preliminary data: evidence from a smaller, prior study that the methods work, recruitment is achievable, and effect sizes are plausible enough to power a full trial.

Pilot grants exist to generate that data. They are not designed to answer a question definitively. They are designed to make it possible to apply for the funding that could. The gap between “we have a question worth investigating” and “we have enough preliminary data to compete for a major federal award” is where many O&P research programs stall. A $30,000 award is not transformative in isolation. It is a bridging mechanism.

That framing matters for understanding what success looks like. A pilot grant that produces a peer-reviewed paper describing preliminary findings and a reproducible method, and then generates a competitive NIH R01 or VA Merit Review application, has done what it is supposed to do. A pilot grant that produces a press release has not.

Who Hafner is and what he is known for

Brian Hafner is a researcher with a substantial and sustained publication record in rehabilitation science and prosthetics. He has worked extensively on functional outcome measures — the tools used to assess how a prosthetic device serves the person using it in actual daily life rather than in controlled clinical conditions.

That work has specific downstream relevance to coverage and access. Medicare’s functional classification system for lower limb prosthetic components — the K-level framework — depends on assessors’ judgments about a beneficiary’s functional capacity. Outcome measures that are validated, reproducible, and sensitive to meaningful change can support coverage arguments, inform appeals, or be used to challenge determinations that do not reflect a patient’s actual functional range.

Hafner has also published on the evidence base underlying prosthetic coverage policy, including analysis of how Medicare coverage decisions relate to available clinical evidence. Research in this area is neither abstract nor politically neutral: the distance between what is published and what the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services references in a coverage determination tends to be wide, and narrowing it requires people who know both the research and the policy apparatus.

The specific focus of his 2026 Pilot Research Grant was not described in detail in the O&P EDGE announcement. The Foundation described the award as supporting “innovative research with the potential to advance orthotic” and prosthetic care. The particular question Hafner is pursuing will be visible when preliminary findings are published, not before.

Two programs, announced in the same week

The timing of the Foundation’s two announcements — Early Career grants published August 21, Pilot Research Grant published August 24 — reflects grant cycles concluding in proximity rather than any announced coordination, as far as can be determined from public information.

What the combination does show is that the Foundation runs two programs targeting different gaps in the same ecosystem. Early career awards are investments in personnel — they fund researchers who are forming professional identities and building track records they will need to compete independently. Pilot awards are investments in questions — they fund research directions that are developed enough to be specific but need a particular type of preliminary data to move forward.

Neither program substitutes for the other. An established researcher with a new line of inquiry they cannot yet fund through federal mechanisms is a different problem than a postdoctoral investigator who needs funded time to stay in the field. The Foundation is, at minimum, trying to address both.

Both programs respond to the same underlying structural fact: O&P research receives less dedicated funding than most comparable clinical specialties, the evidence base for prosthetic and orthotic care develops more slowly as a result, and that slowness has consequences for patients trying to justify coverage for devices and for practitioners trying to practice with an evidence base that has not caught up to the clinical questions they are actually managing.

What to watch for

The useful output from Hafner’s award is not the announcement. It is what the preliminary data shows, whether it supports a larger application, and whether that application eventually funds a study that produces evidence practitioners can use. That sequence, if it completes, will play out over several years.

The Live in Motion Foundation does not publish outcome tracking for prior awards in a form that makes it easy to trace what proportion of pilot grants led to downstream funding or publications that entered clinical discussion. That information would make it possible to evaluate the program’s actual leverage in the field rather than its stated intent.

For now, a researcher known for work on functional outcome measures and coverage policy has funded time to pursue a new question. Whether that question eventually matters to the people making prosthetic coverage decisions — and to the people those decisions affect — depends on what comes after the pilot.

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Amputee News does not provide individualized medical, legal, or benefits advice. Research findings described in coverage may not reflect current clinical practice or coverage policy; consult your care team for guidance relevant to your situation.