BAIL'S TALES - JUNE - "BAIL UNDER FULL SAIL"

It is hardly surprising that the SCIN Stem Cell workshop, “Hope, Hype & Progress” has attracted attendees from incredibly diverse sectors of the Canterbury health community. Stem Cell research is a very topical issue for clinicians, researchers and most importantly people living with spinal cord injury. We were certainly disappointed the snow stranded our presenters in Auckland and the meeting was cancelled. Nevertheless I want to thank Ben Lucas and his team at the NZ Spinal Trust for joining us at BAIL to host what was to have been a special afternoon in the Allan Bean Centre. We hope the workshop is rescheduled and will certainly keep you posted.

Autumn and now winter can often be a time of hunkering down preparing for and coping with cold weather ahead and catching your breath. That is not the case at BAIL where we have a real sense that we are powering into a very fruitful time and under full sail. It has begun with our Lead Researcher Anne Sinnott being invited to Sweden to assist with the English translation of a book by the Spinalis group on wellness and spinal cord injury.

We acknowledge funding support for this venture from the ANZ Staff Foundation and Anne is in Stockholm at the moment working on this project (luckily avoiding both snow and earthquakes!). We are looking forward to her return and we cant wait to share her experiences with you.

We are also very excited to have established an End User Consultation Committee from whom we expect to make considerable inroads into improving the real outcomes of research for people living with disability. If you want to find out more about this committee and how you might access this resource, check out the END USERS tab here on this website or email the committee chair Johnny Bourke at (enduserconsult@burwood.org.nz). We have a couple of other significant “irons in the fire” that you will also hear about in due course but for now, thanks for reading about BAIL’s Tales .