PROJECT ABSTRACT/SUMMARY
The American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) is a multidisciplinary group of professionals
whose mission is to promote and establish standards of excellence, foster research, and
educate and facilitate communication between all stakeholders related to spinal cord
injury/disorder (SCI/D). Attendees in every professional phase from acute care through
rehabilitation, bench to bedside, and junior to senior, are members of ASIA and attend ASIA’s
Annual Scientific Meeting, making its conference a learning opportunity that provides a breadth
of balanced research programming from basic to translational to clinical research and a wide
representation across the clinical care spectrum from acute treatment to post-acute
rehabilitation to chronic care. This unique characteristic of ASIA aligns well with the NINDS
mission as well as goals of the recent NINDS sponsored conference, “SCI 2020”, which had the
objective of “providing opportunities for collaboration across basic, translational, clinical
research and consumer groups”. ASIA’s overarching goal is to be the SCI/D conference to
attend, for the full spectrum of SCI research and care, complementing meetings that focus
solely on clinical care or basic science research. This proposal seeks to build on the
strengths of ASIA and improve its ability to ensure a vibrant, talented and diverse work
force committed to SCI research and care. Specifically, the 2020 meeting seeks to achieve
the following aims:
1) Highlight and disseminate the most up to date evidence-based content while fostering
communication and collaboration between stakeholders of SCI research and treatment.
We intend to begin offering access to highly impactful conference programming via webinars as
another means to increase the accessibility of our meeting to providers and researchers in the
SCI community. ASIA’s Primary Care Committee determined a critical need to disseminate
information to generalist primary care providers whose patient population includes persons with
SCI, due to the specialized nature of the needs of patients with SCI. This proposal will
broadcast, archive, and remove barriers to accessing this content via webinar.
2) Support, train and engage a diverse workforce of SCI researchers, specialists and
generalists who care for persons with SCI. ASIA seeks to increase attendance and
participation from individuals of underrepresented races/ethnicities, as well as those living with a
disability, and those in the early phases of their career. To encourage participation in the
meeting, ASIA will offer 13 diversity travel awards to offset the cost of travel and hotel.