2008 NABIS Conference Recap

The 2008 NABIS Conference on Brain Injury was held in the "Big Easy" in October 2-4, 2008. Close to 450 professionals attended, including physicians, psychologists, clinicians, therapists and attorneys. Featured Plenary Speakers included Dr. John Corrigan, Dr. Debra Braunling-McMorrow, and Dr. Elizabeth Wilde.

The three-day conference, dedicated to moving brain injury science into practice, featured four pre-conference workshops, over 30 individual sessions, 3 Expert Panels, 36 peer-reviewed abstracts, and 11 poster presentations. Abstracts of the submitted papers were published in the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation.

Conference speakers covered topics such as advanced neuroimaging, TBI and psychiatric illness, the neural basis of TBI, TBI and violence, blast injuries, PDA and smartphone technology, lifelong TBI challenges, medication management, and outcome measurement.

Four Annual NABIS Awards were given to:

Dr. John Corrigan (TBI Research)
Michael Davis (Advocacy and Public Policy)
Dr. Jim Schraa (Innovative Clinical Services), and
Dr. Roberta DePompei (NABIS Legends Award)

A new scholarship program in honor of Charles W. Haynes was created by a generous grant from the Seaton Foundation to recognize and support the work of four new brain injury specialists. These scholarship awards, along with the Randy Evans Award for Clinical Service, will be awarded each year through competitive application.

NABIS is already hard at work planning our 2009 Conference, which will be chaired by Harvey Jacobs, PhD, of Richmond, Virginia. Details on the 2009 event will be available on this website soon.