Traumatic Brain Injury
The Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) research program in the Department of Epidemiology is primarily focused on advancing clinical research methods in search of effective treatment for patients with TBI.
The activities include research collaborations with the IMPACT investigators on:
- Improving experimental study design in TBI research
- Understanding the impact of outcome misclassification in TBI clinical trials in order to develop new methods minimizing Glasgow Outcome misclassification in TBI clinical trials
In addition, through research collaborations with the Oslo University Hospital and Oslo University, Norway, IMPACT investigators are:
- Evaluating health and economic outcomes in TBI research
- Developing effective rehabilitation intervention programs for patients with moderate and severe TBI
- Studying long-term outcomes following moderate and severe TBI
Ongoing projects
This work aims at understanding the impact of Glasgow Outcome misclassification through sensitivity analysis in order to develop, validate and implement an online outcome data collection tool that minimizes outcome misclassification in TBI clinical trials. This is a collaborative research effort with IMPACT investigators (International Mission for Prognosis and Analysis of Clinical Trials in TBI), and the project was funded by NIH and sponsored by BHR Pharma in a later phase.
Two rehabilitation intervention studies were funded recently by the Norwegian Health Council. One intervention was designed to target at the community level, and the other was designed with combined cognitive and vocational intervention components for patients with TBI. This is collaborative research with the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Oslo University Hospital and Research Center and Rehabilitation Models and Services (CHARM) at Oslo University, Norway. I am a guest professor for the program of CHARM and PI via a subcontract.
Studying long-term outcomes following moderate and severe TBI: A couple of activities are ongoing to (1) understand the trajectories of long-term functional outcomes and (2) multi-dimensional outcomes following moderate and severe TBI. Again, this is a collaborative research effort with CHARM.