Birc ms winter newsletter 2016 final

The Brain Injury Research Center of Mount Sinai

NEWSLETTER WINTER 2016

Brain Injury Research Center Volume 3, Issue 1

Resources for People with TBI & their Friends and Family BRAIN INJURY AWARNESS MONTH March is Brain Injury Awareness Month. As part of an ongoing campaign to educate the public about the incidence of brain injury and the needs of individuals who are injured and their families, the Brain Injury Association of America takes the month of March to conduct outreach and continue to promote the many types of support that are available.

Learn more about Awareness month activities here.

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IN THIS ISSUE Resources for People with TBI & Friends and Family

Resources for Health Care professionals

Research Study Highlight

Links from Newsletter

ABOUT US

As a part of Brain Injury Awareness Month, the Brain Injury Research Center of Mount Sinai will be participating in the mount Sinai brain Awareness Fair on Tuesday, March 15th, 2016.

The event will be held in the Guggenheim Pavilion from 3:00–5:00 PM and aims to help local school children, their parents, and community members learn about brain health and brain science.

See who else is participating here.

The Brain Injury Research Center of Mount Sinai (BIRC-MS) conducts cutting-edge research, with a primary focus on addressing the challenges of living with traumatic brain injury, or TBI. Our research aims to expand what is known about the long-term challenges that people with TBI face and approaches to leading better lives after injury.

CONTACT US Brain Injury Research Center of Mount Sinai 5 E.98th Street, B-15 New York, NY 10029 212-241-5152

TBI IN THE NEWS New rule requires college athletes to report teammates with concussions More than a dozen high-profile college sports programs now require athletes to report it when they suspect a teammate has sustained a concussion.This rule arrises from the fact that at least half of college athletes’ consucssions go undiangonsed, at times because they try to hide it to continue playing. This new regulation could boost detection of head injuries, but others are deeming this a ‘snictch rule.’

Read more about these new regulations here.

NEW TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY SUPPORT GROUP AT MOUNT SINAI: The Traumatic Brain Injury Support Group is a monthly, in-person meeting for individuals who have suffered from a traumatic brain injury.

In this support group, individuals will have the opportunity to talk to people who can provide emotional support to help tackle the obstacles of living with a brain injury, make new friends, and learn more about brain injury in general.

The group is lead by Timothy Pruce who is the outreach coordinator and TBI advocate for the Brain Injury Research Center, and is also an individual living with brain injury himself.

This group meets the 2nd Wednesday of each month from 2:00pm - 3:00pm in the Brain Injury Research Center at Mount Sinai Medical Center (5 East 98th Street Room B10 New York, NY 10029).

For more information, contact Timothy Pruce at 212-241-5152

BRAIN INJURY ASSOCATION OF AMERICA CAREGIVER SERIES WEBINAR:

Technology Tools to Improve Executive Functioning in Children and Young Adults with Brain Injury How do you decide if a technology tool such as an app is appropriate to the learner’s needs, abilities, and cognitive functioning? How can interaction with apps compensate for issues such as motor planning, vision, and speech issues? When is it time to advance to other programs that use higher order thinking and planning?

In this webinar, Ethan Kichura of the May Center School for Brain Injury and Related Disorders will discuss specific technology tools that can be useful for planning and organizing, assisting with remembering and carrying out tasks, can help improve performance at school, and improve social interactions for those using them. A case study illustrating how apps improved the function or quality of life for an injured person will also be presented.

To learn more about this technology firsthand, attend this BIAA-hosted webinar being held on Thursday, March 3rd, 2016. Register for this event or other upcoming webinars here.

DID HENRY VIII SUFFER SIMILAR BRAIN INJURY AS SOME NFl PlAYERS? England’s notoriously volatile King Henry VIII may have suffered traumatic brain injuries similar to the ones affecting an increasing number of NFL players. After examining letters and other historical documents, researchers at Yale Univeristy say King Henry VIII suffered several jousting mishaps that may have hastened his mental and physical decline.

“It is intriguing to think that modern European history may have changed forever beacuse of a blow to the head.”

- Arash Salardini, Behavioral Neurologist, Co-Director of the Yale Memory Clinic, and senior author of the study.

Read more about this new study from the Yale News Report or from the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience.

RAISING HOPE: After a neurologic diagnosis, some people get stuck in despair while others find a way to move on. Try these strategies to rebuild your life........

This article discusses strategies to help rebuild your life after sustaining a TBI. These approaches range from cultivating allies, to setting attainable goals, and even go on to discuss embracing your new life.

Along with a few professionals who specialize in the field, Kristen Dams-O’Connor, PhD, Associate Professor and Co-Director of the BIRC, is quoted in this article. She gives her persepective on hope and recovery after a TBI. “To ensure you grow from trauma rather than shrink from it, foster a sense of optimism, extraversion, and openness to new experience.

Seek out situations you may find enjoyable and rewarding, even if you have to force yourself to get there.”

- Dr. Dams-O’Connor Read more about the strategies discussed here.

Resources for Healthcare Professionals TOP 10 CONCUSSION RELATED ARTICLES OF 2015 A team of Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center experts with a variety of clinical backgrounds reviewed approximately 250 abstracts from the TBI clinical research literature published in 2015. They chose ten articles they felt advanced the field of TBI research covering a variety of topics including prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes.

Read these abstracts here.

BRAIN INJURY ASSOCATION OF AMERICA WEBINAR: Clinical Implications of Sleep Following TBI According to the Model Systems Knowledge Translation Center, sleep disorders are three times more common in people with TBI than in the general population and nearly 60% of people with TBI experience long-term difficulties with sleep. What is the significance of sleep disturbance in TBI acute recovery and chronic outcome?

In this webinar, Risa Nakase-Richardson, Ph.D., FACRM, will discuss advantages and disadvantages of common sleep measurement metrics used in TBI and the relevance of identifying specific sleep disorders to promote use of evidence-based treatment.

Many clinical studies are underway looking at sleep disturbance and related issues. At the BIRC, we currently have a interventional fatigue study; the Management of Post-TBI Fatigue with Light Exposure study.

To learn more about these sleep measurement metrics used for TBI-specific sleep disorders, attend this BIAA-hosted webinar on Thursday, March 10th, 2016. Register for this event or other upcoming webinars here.

Research Study Highlights Late Effects of Traumatic Brain Injury (LE-TBI) The LE-TBI Project aims to learn more about the long term effects of TBI in the general population. This study is unique in that it involves brain banking - traumatic brain injury has never been studied in the general population with brain autopsy as a major focus.

The LE-TBI project is continuing to enroll living TBI survivors into the LE-TBI Brain Donor Program thorugh May 2016. Participation involves: • an assessment of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functioning • an MRI scan • a blood draw Participants will be asked regardless of their age, gender, or health condition, to consider brain donation and to make their wishes known.

If you are interested, please call or email Jeanne McPhee at (212)-241-2119 or jeanne.mcphee@mountsinai.org.

TBI Focus Group Study What is the TBI Focus Group Study?

This study aims to improve the transition after discharge from a TBI rehabilitation unit by asking those who have recently been through this transition to participate in focus groups and share their experiences and suggestions.

Who can participate?

Participants must be at least 18 years of age, and either: • Have had a TBI in the past year, and received acute rehabilitative care OR • Be the caregiver of someone who had a TBI in the past year and received rehabilitative care What is involved?

Participation involves attending focus groups where participants will answer questions and contribute to conversations about the transition after discharge. The groups will be held at the BIRC and will last 1-1.5 hours. Participants will also be asked to provide demographic and injury-related information.

If you are interested, please call or email Alex landau at (212)-241-4820 or alexandra.landau@mountsinai.org.

A New Addition to the BIRC The Brain Injury Research Center welcomes a new Senior Clinical Research Coordinator to our team!

Carol Stamm has been a Clinical Research Coordinator for over 30 years in investigator-initiated, industry, and cooperative studies, having spent most of those years at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, NY. Her clinical trials experiences in hematology/ oncology, bone marrow transplant, autism, dementia, spinal cord injury, and radiation oncology provide a solid foundation for working with rehabilitation and traumatic brain injury patients. She enjoys supporting patients through their study involvement and while they work towards improving their quality of life. In her spare time Carol enjoys bread baking, reading, and yoga.

Email us at birc@mountsinai.org and tell us what you would like to learn more about so that we can cover it in one our next issues!

Links from this Newsletter The URLs below correspond to the links in this newsletter. If you are unable to open up a link in this newsletter, simply copy and paste the corresponding link below into your web browser for easy access!

Resources for People with TBI & their Friends and Family BRAIN INJURY AWARENESS MONTH http://www.biausa.org/brain-injury-awareness-month.htm http://icahn.mssm.edu/research/friedman/events/brain-awareness-week TBI IN THE NEWS http://www.statnews.com/2016/02/23/colleges-athletes-report-teammates-concussions/?utm_content=buffer027d8&utm_medium=social&utm_ source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer BRAIN INJURY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA CAREGIVER SERIES WEBINAR: Technology Tools to Improve Executive Functioning in Children and Young Adults with Brain Injury General- http://www.biausa.org/biaa-events.htm Specific Event- http://shop.biausa.org/product/CARM030316/technologytoolstoimproveexecutivefunctioninginchildrenyoungadultswithbraininjuryacaregiverseducationserieslivewebinar.php DID HENRY VIII SUFFER SAME BRAIN INJURY AS SOME NFL PLAYERS? http://news.yale.edu/2016/02/02/did-henry-viii-suffer-same-brain-injurysome-nfl-players http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967586815006803 RAISING HOPE http://patients.aan.com/resources/neurologynow/index. cfm?event=home.showArticle&id=ovid.com%3A%2Fbib%2Fovftdb%2F01222928-201511060-00017 Resources for Healthcare Professionals TOP 10 CONCUSSION RELATED ARTICLES OF 2015 http://www.brainline.org/content/2016/02/top-10-concussion-research-articles-of-2015.html BRAIN INJURY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA WEBINAR: Clinical Implications of Sleep Following TBI http://www.biausa.org/biaa-events.htm

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Feel free to share this information with friends and family. Happy reading, and be on the lookout for future updates and announcements!

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This newsletter was developed under grants from the U.S. Department of Education, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), grant number H133A070033 and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), grant number 5 R49 CE002092-02. However, this does not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.