Range of Motion Project

The Range Of Motion Project (ROMP), is a nonprofit, category leader in improving human mobility and unlocking human potential. We stand in solidarity with the most vulnerable people with disabilities in the Western Hemisphere, fighting the barriers of poverty and broken or non-existent rehabilitation systems that they face on a daily basis. ROMP realizes this mission by providing high-quality prosthetic care and community based rehabilitation through its operations in Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador, and the United States.

ROMP believes that mobility is a concept that unites all human beings, regardless of geographic location, financial means, or socioeconomic status. To be mobile is key to all areas of a person’s life, including health, family, community, education, work, play, and adventure. People become immobile not by broken bodies, but by broken rehabilitation systems; not by missing limbs, but by missing prostheses. This understanding drives the multifaceted approach that ROMP takes across all of its programs:

Equalizing the distribution of prosthetic care by providing the highest-quality care to the most vulnerable people with disabilities in the Western Hemisphere;

Decentralizing care delivery onto the community level, and diversifying services to address the needs and desires in the health, education, livelihood, social, and empowerment categories;

Innovating new technologies, care delivery models, and financing mechanisms to continually achieve excellence and category leadership in the global rehabilitation community;

Raising public and political awareness for the drivers and effects of immobility and disability through public messaging and participating in the creation of policies;

Enabling people with disabilities to maximize their human mobility and unlock their full human potential through advocacy and recreation.

ROMP believes that mobility is a concept that unites all human beings, regardless of geographic location, financial means, or socioeconomic status. To be mobile is key to all areas of a person’s life, including health, family, community, education, work, play, and adventure. People become immobile not by broken bodies, but by broken rehabilitation systems; not by missing limbs, but by missing prostheses. This understanding drives the multifaceted approach that ROMP takes across all of its programs:

Equalizing the distribution of prosthetic care by providing the highest-quality care to the most vulnerable people with disabilities in the Western Hemisphere;

Decentralizing care delivery onto the community level, and diversifying services to address the needs and desires in the health, education, livelihood, social, and empowerment categories;

Innovating new technologies, care delivery models, and financing mechanisms to continually achieve excellence and category leadership in the global rehabilitation community;

Raising public and political awareness for the drivers and effects of immobility and disability through public messaging and participating in the creation of policies;

Enabling people with disabilities to maximize their human mobility and unlock their full human potential through advocacy and recreation.

ROMP operates the following programs:

Components for a Cause; the largest component recycling program in the United States, collecting gently-used and new prosthetic components and redistributing them to fuel ROMP clinical operations in Guatemala, Ecuador, and the US.

The United States Assistance Program (USAP); program that serves people with amputation in the United States who do not have access to care due to immigration status, lack of insurance, and/or extreme financial hardship. USAP practitioners volunteer their clinical time and ROMP provides prosthetic components for each case.

ROMP Guatemala Clinic; permanent prosthetic clinic that is one of the largest in Guatemala, absorbing the majority of patients that undergo amputation in the public health system. The clinic is fully staffed and equipped by Guatemalans and provides the entire range of prosthetic care to patients. A mobile clinic provides care to patients in remote parts of Guatemala, Mexico, and Honduras.

Guatemala Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR); program in which community rehabilitation workers visit patients in their homes twice per month over a period of five months to accompany patients in their general health, mental health, rehabilitation, and prosthesis use needs. Outside of these visits, the workers coordinate services based on the individual needs of each patient, and work to integrate the patient into their community and improve their access to job opportunities and public services.

ROMP Ecuador Operations; providing prosthetic care and rehabilitation to amputees in Ecuador via volunteer clinical programs and permanent clinical operations in Quito. Clinical care is provided directly by Ecuadorian staff and international volunteers serving the most vulnerable people living with amputation in Ecuador including Venezuelan refugees, children and young adults who do not have access to prosthetic care within the public or private health network.

Moving for ROMP and Climbing for ROMP; programs to raise awareness of the ROMP mission and facilitate amputees’ re-entry into sports and mountaineering following limb loss.

ROMP Clinical and Innovation Volunteer Programs in Ecuador and Guatemala; program through which over 150 volunteer prosthetists, physical and occupational therapists, physicians, and engineers serve patients with amputation at ROMP clinical operations in Guatemala and Ecuador. These programs temporarily augment permanent clinical bandwidth in these countries, and serve as a conduit for information exchange between US, Guatemalan, and Ecuadorian practitioners.

2005: ROMP was founded as a 501c3, non-profit organization in the United States in 2005. ROMP is currently incorporated as a non-profit organization in the USA, Guatemala, and Ecuador. ROMP established a permanent prosthetics clinic in the city of Zacapa, Guatemala in October 2005.

2006-2007: ROMP focused on training local Guatemalan staff to operate the clinic in Zacapa. In 2007, after building a new patient care center in Guatemala, co-founder and current Executive Director, David Krupa, moved to Ecuador to establish ROMP operations and systems- strengthening initiatives.

2010: ROMP began treating underserved amputee patients in the United States including: uninsured, underinsured and those experiencing financial hardship.

2011: The 1000th patient was treated.

2013: Official ROMP offices were opened in Ecuador. Mobile clinic operations were launched in Guatemala.

2015: ROMP launched the Climbing for ROMP program - creating the opportunity for people, including amputees, from all over the world, to climb to achieve an ambitious goal and raise awareness and funds for ROMP operations.

2017: ROMP published a qualitative situation analysis of people living with amputation in Guatemala. This qualitative analysis identified key areas of unmet need in our patients’ general and mental health, education and livelihood, and social integration and empowerment, compelling us to provide integral, community based services that promote the multifaceted mobility of our patients. Our 3,000th patient was treated.

2018: Based on the 2017 situation analysis findings, ROMP operated a pilot Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) program in Guatemala. The graduates of the program showed myriad improvements to the different facets of their mobility. By the end of 2018, ROMP had delivered 3,345 prosthetic devices and facilitated 9,249 patient visits. (since inception -- 2005).

2019: Results from the 2018 CBR pilot study were published. The second cohort of participants graduated from the ROMP Program on CBR in Guatemala, and the third cohort is currently underway. In July, ROMP partnered with the Loma Linda University School of Public Health to conduct a situation analysis of amputation in Ecuador, laying the foundation for a CBR pilot there in 2020.

2020: COVID took a toll in the spring as we shut down our clinics for 1 month and quickly shifted to telehealth where we could. In May, we reopened our doors with proper PPE and new cleaning procedures and started seeing patients again. In 2020 we served our 4,000 patient.

2021: ROMP operated our first volunteer clinic post-COVID. We delivered 2x as much prosthetic care as 2020. We started to look at expanding our services into the Ecuadorian Amazon through mobile clinic care.

2022: ROMP opened a new warehouse and headquarters in Denver, CO and a permanent clinic in Quito, Ecuador and mobilized care to the Amazon. We moved our operations from Zacapa, Guatemala to the capital city of Guatemala City.