The National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) has awarded The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center a 5-year, $2.2 million grant to build the Ohio Regional Spinal Cord Injury Model System.

Once built, the Ohio system will join 13 others across the country that support innovative approaches and research in the delivery, demonstration and evaluation of medical, rehabilitation, vocational, and other services to meet the needs of individuals with spinal cord injury.

Each of these federally funded systems contributes to the Spinal Cord Injury Model Systems National Database, which follows spinal cord injured people from their injury and for the rest of their life, according to a media release from Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

Specifically, the Ohio Regional Spinal Cord Injury Model System will be led by neurologist Dr Jan Schwab and will focus on immune deficiency after a spinal cord injury, which could lead to poor neurological recovery and sometimes death. Schwab’s research will take advantage of the care provided at the specialized spinal cord injury unit opening in Ohio State Wexler Medical Center’s new Brain and Spine Hospital.

“We hope to identify those patients at risk for long-term complications due to their reduced ability to fight infection,” says Schwab, a member of Ohio State’s Neurological Institute, in the release.

“With this grant, we’ll integrate the newly formed Spinal Cord Injury Unit to bridge acute surgical and chronic rehabilitative spinal cord injury care so that we can better understand why some patients are more susceptible to infections such as pneumonia. Identifying patients at risk will allow us to treat these patients earlier and more aggressively so that they will have improved outcomes,” Schwab adds.

Rehabilitation psychologist Jennifer Bogner is the co-principal investigator and John Corrigan, professor in the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation, is a co-investigator. Kristen Jackson, a clinical assistant professor in the division of rehabilitation psychology in the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation, will lead a community-based group of advisers. Neurosurgeon Dr. Francis Farhadi and Dr Jerry W. Mysiw, chair of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation will complement the Spinal Cord Model System Consortium formed at Ohio State, the release states.

[Source: Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center]