The Spaulding New England Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center is the best facility in the New England area for anyone with a spinal cord injury. The center was a merger between the Spaulding Harvard Spinal Cord Injury Model System and the New England Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center Model System years ago, with the latest incarnation now located in Charlestown, Massachusetts.
The Spaulding New England Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center works in collaboration with the Spaulding rehabilitation hospital and Gaylord Specialty Healthcare, which provides extensive therapy services to people with spinal cord injuries. To learn more about the Spaulding New England Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center, including their research, education, and the resources they provide, please continue reading below.
SCI Education & Resources
One of the most impressive educational resources offered by the Spaulding New England Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center is their Knowledge in Motion (KiM) lecture and webcast series hosted by people living with spinal cord injuries as well as their friends, family members, and healthcare professionals.
Each lecture offered through KiM takes place at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts and they feature one speaker who discusses a topic of importance to the spinal cord injury community. The lectures are available online as a free webcast where you can submit questions to the speaker.
Each lecture series is 90 minutes in length. The first 45 minutes are dedicated to the guest speaker, with the following 45 minutes designated as discussion time where audience members can interact with the presenter. If you attend in-person, a light dinner is also served before each lecture. To see past recordings of their lecture series, click here: https://snerscic.org/sci-education/kim-lecture-with-live-webcasts/
The Spaulding New England Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center offers several other educational materials on how to manage life with a spinal cord injury. You will find their New England SCI Toolkit video series where they had modules on skincare and autonomic dysreflexia, which are two very important health issues that people with spinal cord injuries experience.
You'll also find the links to over two dozen fact sheets on various spinal cord injury side effects. These consumer fact sheets are on the following: Urinary tract infections, Spasticity and spinal cord injury, Surgical alternatives for bladder management, Pregnancy and women with spinal cord injuries, Gait training, Safe transfer techniques, and Wheelchairs series: What the SCI consumer needs to know.
These fact sheets can also be found in Spanish and English and you can find them here: https://snerscic.org/sci-education/consumer-fact-sheets/. And lastly, you'll find a huge list of spinal cord injury resources with contact information. From hospital resources in the New England-area to outpatient services, click here: https://snerscic.org/resources/resource-list/
Research
The research going on at the Spaulding New England Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center is impressive. They are always recruiting for various spinal cord injury studies, which are funded by a Federal grant. Many of their studies look at living with a chronic injury and how the lives of people with chronic spinal cord injuries can be improved.
For example, one of their studies looks at the equity and quality of assistive technology available for people with spinal cord injuries. Another study looks at early predictors of treatment outcomes after an acute spinal cord injury. Many of the studies involve anecdotal evidence from the injured person. They also have an ongoing study looking at the possibility of people with spinal cord injuries being more at risk of cardio-endocrine disease risks.
If you want to see the full list of all of the studies currently recruiting at Spaulding New England Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center, click here: https://snerscic.org/research/snerscic-studies-in-2016-2021 and here https://msktc.org/researchcenter/detail/SpauldingNewEnglandSCI. And if you are interested in applying to any of the studies, it is best to contact them via email at snerscic@partners.org.
You can learn more about past research studies as well. They offer presentations by their researchers on the research studies they’ve completed. Check out all of these presentations here: https://snerscic.org/research/research-presentations/
- Learn more: https://snerscic.org/
