Spinal Cord Injury Update
Winter 2006: Volume 15, Number 1
Leadership Change at NWRSCIS
Readers of this newsletter know Dr. Diana Cardenas as the long-time director of the Northwest Regional Spinal Cord Injury System (NWRSCIS), the founder of the monthly SCI Forums at the UW Medical Center, and a nationally recognized leader in the field of spinal cord injury medicine. After 25 years at the University of Washington, Cardenas is leaving her position here to become Professor and Chair of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Miami.
Cardenas' numerous scientific accomplishments include research on all aspects of SCI care, especially in the areas of UTI , bladder management and pain. She has lectured nationally and internationally and published more than 100 articles, chapters and books, mostly on the topic of SCI . Cardenas joined the UW faculty in 1981, became clinical director of the SCI Service in 1987 and director of the SCI Clinic in 1990. She has held many national leadership positions in her field and in 2004 was elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine.
All of us at the UW and the NWRSCIS thank her for her exceptional leadership and clinical care, and wish her well in her new professional home.
Replacing Cardenas as the new director of the NWRSCIS is Charles Bombardier, PhD, clinical psychologist and professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, who has served on the grant since 1990 and has been co-director with Dr. Cardenas since 2000. Dr. Bombardier has extensive clinical and research experience in the domain of psychosocial consequences of SCI . For 16 years he has been the attending psychologist on the inpatient rehabilitation unit at Harborview Medical Center. He has published in the areas of access to the environment, substance abuse and depression after SCI . His current research interests are in the areas of exercise/activity promotion, lifestyle change, depression, pain management and prevention of rehospitalization and recurrent pressure ulcers after SCI .
Bidding farewell to Dr. Diana Cardenas (holding flowers) are SCI Consumer Advisory Board Members (seated, left to right) Kirk Hennig, Chris Garbaccio, Tammy Wilber and (standing behind Dr. Cardenas) Jill Price, and UW staff (top row, left to right) Laneta Nauman, Dr. Charles Bombardier, Debra Glazer, Norma Cole, Cathy Warms and Cynthia Salzman.