President’s Message
Director’s Notes
Kelly Honored by New York Mets
Sexual Health Survey
Your Ostomy Is Your Friend
Coordinated National Effort Needed To Develop New SCI Therapies
Terri Schiavo: Lessons Learned
The Bathroom Squeeze: Does the New NYC Code Set Back Residential Access?
United Spinal and Kessler Team Up for Consumer Education Series
It’s Not Easy
Shifting Gears
Outside the Frames
Monica Moshenko and DisAbility News and […]

As I do rounds at the different hospitals, I am disturbed to see that our newly injured patients don’t have the benefit of talking with older members. These talks in the old days were an education that you could not get any place else. They were instrumental in getting you through rehabilitation. Some of […]

I want to take the opportunity to publicly thank Thomas T. Hodne, A.I.A., for 30 years of dedicated and devoted service to the organization. Tom has been a member since 1962; he worked for the organization from May 1975 to May 2005.
Tom was truly one of Jim Peters’ proudest finds, and for good reason. From […]

The background
As Compliance Specialist Linda Gutmann explained in last December’s Orbit, New York City’s 17-year-old accessibility requirements, Local Law 58 (LL58), will be replaced when the City adopts the International Building Code (IBC).
However, the IBC requires that only 2% of the units in newly constructed apartment buildings that have 21 or more units comply with […]

The life and death of Terri Schiavo showed the world the challenges people with severe disabilities face when they are unable to communicate their wishes. Unable to care for herself for 15 years, Schiavo had parents and siblings who so prized her life, they were willing to spend their own lives giving everything they could […]

The summer of 1997: I’m a kid, watching a wrestling match on TV and all I can do is think, “Imagine if I was a wrestler, I’d be called The Dream! Because that’s all it is, is a dream.” I have watched wrestling on TV since I was very little. Some times for Halloween, I […]

According to a new report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a multifaceted approach to research on spinal cord injuries––one that pursues combinations of therapies and ways to treat injuries at different stages––is needed to speed progress toward a cure.

Colostomy, ileostomy, urostomy (urinary diversion)—any ostomy is not the end of the world.

What is an ostomy? It is a surgically created opening in the abdomen, to which the small or large intestine is diverted for evacuating waste when the digestive system breaks down. It may be temporary or permanent depending on the individual. A stoma––the […]

Crime can be very expensive for victims, beyond the loss of life, limb or property they entail. Out-of-pocket expenses caused by a crime may include the repair or replacement of essential personal property, loss of earning and support, unlimited medical bills and expenses including the cost of counseling, vocational rehabilitation, crime scene clean up, funeral […]

On Monday evening April 11th, the New York Mets Major League Baseball team presented their Ya Gotta Believe Award to Gerard M. Kelly, executive director of United Spinal Association, at the team’s annual Welcome Home Dinner to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The event was held in the Grand Ballroom of the New York Hilton […]

Coming to a theater near you: An award-winning, hard-hitting documentary on quad rugby that blows away stereotypes about quadriplegia.
The film opens on the image of a young man with close-cropped red hair and a flaming goatee in a dark sweat suit sitting on the edge of a bed. He lifts himself up by his muscular […]

Not Dead Yet and movie critics are still arguing over the Oscar-winning film from Clint Eastwood.
Some movies are designed to make audiences think. For certain members of the disability community, four-time Oscar® winner Million Dollar Baby, about a grizzled old trainer in the 1930s taking on a promising young woman boxer to mentor only to […]

The Perspectives International Film Festival focuses on movies about and by people with all kinds of disabilities.
Films are often criticized for following established (and sometimes overused) formulas. The Perspectives International Film Festival (www.perspectives-iff.org/about/ index.asp), helps filmmakers break away from these widely accepted patterns. The three-day event was started by the Frank D. Lanterman Regional […]

Wanted: 50-year-old single mom with little money and no media experience—holding a full-time day job while raising an autistic child—to launch weekly radio talk show for the disabled community. Major media outlets largely indifferent, but people with disabilities likely to tune in. Exhausting hours with no assistants; blind faith and fierce determination a plus.
This imaginary […]

Volkswagen of America, Inc. and VSA arts are proud to partner together for the fourth year in presenting an unprecedented opportunity for young artists with disabilities. The program, meant to encourage and recognize emerging talent in the visual arts, is made possible through the generous financial assistance of Volkswagen of America, Inc.
Young artists with […]

I live an ordinary life. Like my neighbors in suburbia, I am a parent, live in a nice home, shop at the local grocery store, buy gas for my car at the self-serve station, complain about the school system, and bemoan escalating tax bills. Again, like others, I am active in my son’s school and, […]

United Spinal Association and the Northern New Jersey Spinal Cord Injury System (NNJSCIS) are teaming up to present a consumer-oriented medical education conference entitled, Life After Spinal Cord Injury: A Dialogue About Maintaining Health.
This day-long event will be held at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange, New Jersey on June 17, 2005. The […]

I am conducting a research study to determine more details about the sexual dysfunctions experienced by men and women with spinal cord injuries. The information gained from this study will be used to help scientists and medical doctors develop experiments addressing different sexual dysfunctions, with the aim of developing therapeutic treatments for people living with […]

In the field of the psychology of living with a spinal cord injury (SCI), the existing literature deals largely with the adjustment of adults; the focus on children and young adults with SCI is a relatively new phenomenon. One brief column, of course, cannot redress this imbalance, but I can at least summarize the basics […]