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Nowhere is the significance of the reform act in ‘97 and the Bucks
for Brains funding in ’98, more apparent than
than it is with our Kentucky Spinal Cord research center.
Since the late 90’s this state has invested 19.2 million
dollars in this program, Bucks for Brains, and then from the little court fee
that we get as part of, uh, if you’re speeding along the highway
and you get a speeding ticket, you pay your fine, you also pay court costs
and a portion of that court cost comes to support us.
From those two revenue sources, we’ve received 19.2 million dollars
to support our work at the Kentucky Spinal Cord Research
Program here at the University of Louisville.
The amount of funding that we’ve generated in that same period of time
has been 68.8 million dollars, that’s a pretty good return on the states
investment and in 2011 alone, the years not over so who knows what may
happen in the next month, but we generated 13.7 million dollars in funding in 2011 alone.
If you’ve seen what I’ve seen over in Fraiser Rehab and that’s one
of the first patients that Jonathan and others and his whole team and Darryl had
treated standing up where they couldn’t stand before and
watching the muscles in their leg work, you’d believe in a miracle,
well in fact it’s not a miracle, it’s what we do in health sciences,
it’s the so called bench to the bedside approach where basic science
researchers, people do clinical trials, people who operate on patients,
who treat patients, all come together in a multi-disciplinary fashion,
put their brains together, if you will, really think about novel ways to
deal with diseases that two centuries ago were untreatable
and in fact two years ago were untreatable.
We have patients coming from all over the world to come to Louisville
to enroll in the rehabilitation programs both from a treatment standpoint
and a research standpoint at Fraiser and UofL with Susie and Darryl.
Importantly though what doesn’t, isn’t, quite as splashy but I think
is equally as important we have post doctorate fellows and
graduate students that come specifically to the
University of Louisville to work with our scientists.
The fact that this research group is here has enabled neurosurgery
and Dr. Hodes and his colleagues to recruit the absolute best of residents,
those trainees are then carrying forth what we have started here
and the center is a very strong resource and a real strength to
the portfolio of the University of Louisville.