United Spinal has always put its money where its mouth is when it comes to member well-being.
By Terry Moakley
During the initial year of the existence of our predecessor organization, founding members supported a resolution to “set up a research foundation for a study of problems in all phases of paraplegia,” according to the April 1947 issue of The Paraplegia News. Soon after, the National Paraplegia Foundation (NPF)-today known as the National Spinal Cord Injury Association-came into being. This early recognition of the need for diverse medical research continues today in the programs of our association.
Later on in the 1940s, to help keep this fledgling foundation afloat, our organization loaned the NPF a sum of $5,000-a significant amount of money back then. Down the road, our Board of Directors voted to forgive this loan, and this action stands as another example of our commitment to research.
Financial Health
Between that time and the mid-1970s, we experienced our own financial shortfalls, but our organization’s 1973 decision to conduct our own fundraising program changed everything and elevated our ability to make research investments. During that decade, the newsletter for our members with multiple sclerosis (MS) was launched-today it is Multiple Sclerosis Quarterly Report magazine-which United Spinal continues to facilitate as managing editor. Then-Executive Director Jim Peters also made the revitalization of an organization of physicians who treat individuals with spinal cord injury/disorder (SCI/D)-the American Paraplegia Society-a very high priority, and Jim was successful in this endeavor. Its research publication, The Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine, is recognized for its excellence the world over and we are its publisher.
Over the next decade, we helped organize similar associations of nurses and psychologists/social workers who counsel persons with SCI/D. But the crowning achievement of our group in that era has to be the 1987 opening of the PVA-United Spinal Association Center for Neuroscience and Regeneration Research at Yale University. Important advances have been made in such areas as the treatment of neuropathic pain in persons with SCI/D, and in understanding what happens to certain cells to cause paralysis at the time of injury. After helping to build this modern basic science research facility, we have ensured its ongoing progress by providing millions of dollars in annual research grants to it.
Investments in Health
Running a close second to our Yale research center in importance to our members is the work of the Bronx Spinal Cord Damage Research Center, located at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center. We provided seed funding to launch this unique research endeavor in 1989 and we have contributed more than $4.5 million in support to it over the years. This center’s investigators have made fundamental contributions to the understanding of, and treatment for, secondary conditions among persons with SCI/D such as cardiovascular disease and pulmonary dysfunction. Just last year they were awarded a multi-year, $12 million grant to investigate the use of anabolic steroid therapy to improve the healing of pressure ulcers in persons with SCI/D.
It turns out that our founding members, as well as our leaders who followed them, were absolutely correct in believing in the necessity of medical research. United Spinal’s investments in this field are improving and extending the lives of people with a SCI/D all over this planet.
Terry Moakley, associate executive director of Public Affair, is United Spinal’s unofficial historian.
