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.
The 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Spinal Injury Association will be held on May 3rd -6th, 2020, at the New Orleans Marriott in New Orleans, Louisiana. The goal of the meeting is to provide a platform for the exchange of scientific ideas and advancements among clinicians and researchers who aim to advance research and care of people with spinal cord injuries and disorders. This meeting will emphasize connecting a diverse group of researchers and clinicians from varied races, ethnicities, abilities, and career levels, and it will create a webinar that will be highly useful to general practitioners and spinal cord injury specialists in any community.
