Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Week 2023

Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Week (SCIAW) is an important awareness week for people living with spinal cord injury (SCI), rehabilitation service providers, industry, and the wider community. It is a time to get informed about the challenges people with SCI face in daily life, and the often simple actions that you can take towards inclusion and ensuring better access for the 4.4 million people living with disability in Australia. 

This year, the focus is on employment and the workforce, with the theme of #SCIAW23 being Enable your business: employ people with disability. 

Many of our research projects at The Hopkins Centre are SCI-related, including the following: 

• The Back2Work Project
• The International Spinal Cord Injury (InSCI) project
• Complex Rehabilitation in Systems under Immense Stress (CRISIS): Secondary complications and access to services during system disruption for people with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI)
• The upcoming Round 7 Seed Project Sustained employment following acquired brain or spinal cord injury: Case studies involving employees, employers, and service providers.
• Design and feasibility testing of a Graded Motor Imagery application to manage neuropathic pain in people with spinal cord injury

Our website it also a storehouse for a huge array of publications on the topic of SCI, with the most relevant publications to this years SCIAW theme including:

• Employment outcomes following spinal cord injury: a population-based cross-sectional study in Australia
• The feasibility of using mouthpiece ventilation in the intensive care unit for post-extubation breathing support after acute tetraplegia
• Investigating employment following spinal cord injury: outcomes, methods, and population demographics

Throughout SCIAW, we will be posting stories about our spinal cord injury research, as well as highlighting the incredible work of our partner organisations and Ambassadors. Please look out for these stories, follow them and share them. Stay tuned for more information to come on our research projects, researchers and partnerships via our website and on twitter @hopkins_centre and LinkedIn @The Hopkins Centre

You can also get informed about some of the benefits of employing people with disability or find out more information about SCI from our affiliate partner Spinal Life Australia.