HEAT

The Hippotherapy Evaluation and Assessment Tool was developed to meet the needs in the hippotherapy community for one assessment that could be used to measure patient's progress through a wide range of ages and diagnoses. First created in 2011 by Dr. Mary Shotwell, the HEAT was designed to measure both physical and psychological improvements in a patient following hippotherapy treatment. The four domains of the HEAT (Static Posture, Dynamic Motor Behavior, Sensory Processing, and Psychosocial/Behavioral) are scored by weighting them according to the areas with the most statistically significant research. For example, there are more studies available regarding hippotherapy and dynamic motor behavior, so this domain contains 45 of the possible 100 points for scoring.