Jason and Matthew talk with U2FP Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) Director and Science Writer, Sam Maddox in the first part of our series on Spinal Stimulation. We’ve been thinking about the need for a discussion on what spinal stimulation is, why it's been studied so extensively, who are the influential scientists and players in the space, the trajectory of where and how it started as an exploration for restoring function in SCI, and - most importantly - what this all means for folks with a spinal cord injury.

This conversation is part one of a series that kicks off with some history, background and milestones in the stim field. We will follow up on subsequent podcasts with where it appears to be going, recent advancements in the research, and the various companies working to bring their version of spinal stim to market.

If you have not listened to our previous podcasts covering spinal cord stim, check out our interviews with Susie Harkema, Gregoire Courtine, David Darrow, Chet Mortiz, Kendall Lee and Kristin Zhao, and also the interview with the first women to be implanted with epidural stimulators; Kathy Allen and Sandra Mulder. (Visit this episode's webpage for access to all these resource links: https://u2fp.org/get-educated/curecast/episode-71.html)

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Guest Bio:

Sam Maddox (of Los Angeles, California) is former Knowledge Manager and spinal cord injury research writer for the Reeve Foundation. He is the author of several books related to chronic health and paralysis, including four editions of the Paralysis Resource Guide, published by the Reeve Foundation. In 1992 Maddox wrote the first comprehensive history of spinal cord injury research, The Quest for Cure: Restoring Function After Spinal Cord Injury. He wrote and published the widely acclaimed resource book Spinal Network, and is founder of New Mobility magazine. Maddox was a panel member on The Consortium for Spinal Cord Medicine, which develops and disseminates evidence-based clinical practice guidelines to professionals and consumers. He is currently writing and producing books as a resource for the newly injured: SCI: First 90 Days. He has been a reporter for many magazines, including Time, Money and People. Maddox is a graduate of the University of Colorado, where he taught in the School of Journalism.