Research fund board meets with
governor
Members
of the board and staff of the South Carolina Spinal Cord Injury
Research Fund (SCIRF) met Sept. 22 with Gov. Mark Sanford at the South
Carolina statehouse for an update on the first four-and-one-half years
of fund achievement. SCIRF’s purpose is to promote research to develop a better understanding of causes and effective treatment strategies for paralysis, sensory loss and other consequences of spinal cord injury and disease. SCIRF was enacted in 2000 by the S.C. Legislature and began Jan. 1, 2001 with a $100 surcharge on each Driving Under the Influence (DUI) conviction. SCIRF’s $4 million dollar threshold was passed during the same month that the meeting with the governor occurred.
S.C. Gov. Mark
Sanford joins, from left, SC-SCIRF members Dr. Brian Cuddy, chairman;
Walker Coleman, Dr. Daniel Westercam and Dr. James Krause, seated,
during the September meeting.While administered by MUSC, the fund is actually a separate state organization with its own seven-member board appointed by the governor based on recommendations by the MUSC president and currently chaired by Brian Cuddy, M.D., a neurosurgeon practicing in Charleston. Walker Coleman, assistant to the president for operations at MUSC, was assigned to be fund administrator and devoted a percentage of his time to help initiate the fund and oversee its administrative activities.
Some of the fund’s initial grants helped recruit the fund’s scientific directors, James Krause, Ph.D., associate dean for clinical research, College of Health Professions; and Mark Kindy, Ph.D., director of the Neurosciences Institute and associate director of the S.C. Spinal Cord Injury Center. Also present at the meeting was board member Daniel Westercam, Ph.D., a physiatrist and director of Rehabilitative Services at Palmetto Richland Hospital in Columbia.
Since its inception, the fund has made 38 project awards. These have included basic and applied research projects as well as public and professional education (two consumer conferences and one scientific conference with national expertise), research career development, and special initiatives that will develop a Center for Interdisciplinary Spinal Cord Injury Research, and explore the feasibility of enhanced primary rehabilitation services in the state. Recipients of funds have included Clemson University, the University of South Carolina, MUSC, the South Carolina Spinal Cord Injury Association, the Disabilities Resource Center of Charleston, and the Roger C. Peace Rehabilitation Hospital of the Greenville Hospital System.
The latest open request for proposals (RFP) was issued in August with a mid-December deadline for recruitment of an endowed chair (scientific and clinical scientist) in the area of spinal cord injury. Two other RFPs currently remain open (bridge funding and investigator recruitment assistance) with the major annual RFP (round 2006) to be issued mid-November for a Jan. 15, 2007 deadline and July 1 funding.
To date, MUSC faculty has competitively earned awards for 22 projects totaling almost $2.35 million with the period of one extending until January 2009 when the fund itself should have raised more than $5.8 million.
Also discussed with the governor were fund priorities and the importance of cooperative assistance from the governor and state legislature, particularly in the area of developing and providing a full range of rehabilitation services in South Carolina enabling spinal cord injury survivors to return to the work force. Visit http://www.scscirf.org/.
Friday, Oct. 20, 2006
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