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Mulcahey Award for Research in Outcomes Measurement
The 2023 Mulcahey Award has been awarded to Dr. Salma Aly for her abstract “Utilization of machine learning techniques in prediction of hospital readmission during one year after spinal cord injury.”
Salma M. Aly, MD, is a researcher at the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and an assistant lecturer in Public health and Community Medicine at Alexandria Faculty of Medicine. She finished her Bachelor’s degree in Medicine and surgery in 2011 and prepared Master’s and Ph.D. in Community and preventive medicine from the Alexandria Faculty of Medicine. Her PhD research focused on machine learning (ML) application in medical research mainly on studying Multiple Sclerosis disease risk factors and progression. She won the scholarship grant in Egypt and moved to UAB where she started machine learning work in the Health Informatics Institute at UAB School of Medicine.
Then she moved to the Department of Community and Family Medicine at UAB and through her supervisor, she got in contact with Professor Dr. Chen Yu-ying who is the head of the National Statistical Center of Spinal Cord Injury (NSCSCI) at UAB. Salma thought about the use of ML on the available database about patients with SCI to predict the event of readmission to the hospital during first-year post-injury aiming to Identify the causes of rehospitalizations that should help guide efforts to reduce their necessity.
The Mulcahey Award honors MJ Mulcahey, PhD, OTR/L, a recognized world expert in the rehabilitation of and measurement of outcomes specific to children with spinal cord injury and their families. Dr. Mulcahey served as the Director of Clinical Research and Rehabilitation at the Shriners Hospitals for Children in Philadelphia and is currently a Professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy in the College of Health Professions at Thomas Jefferson University. She was also the first non-physician president of ASIA.
The MJ Mulcahey Award is given for the best abstract submitted to the annual ASIA conference, in the field of outcomes measurement (or outcomes research) in spinal cord injury rehabilitation.
How to Apply
Submit your abstract in response to the general call for abstracts for the annual meeting. Submission deadline for the Mulcahey award is the closing date for the General Call for Abstracts.
Rules and Eligibility
Submitters do not have to be members of ASIA. After reviewing all submitted abstracts for the conference, the program committee will determine the top three papers in the area of outcomes measurement and will forward them to the Research and Awards Committee to determine the winner. The Mulcahey award includes a cash prize and an award presented during the annual scientific meeting.
Individuals currently serving as ASIA President, President-Elect, Immediate Past President, Research and Awards Committee Chair and Vice Chair are ineligible for the Mulcahey Award.
Past Mulcahey Award Recipients
2022 – Alberto Isaac Perez SanPablo, DSc
Reliability and Validity of the Assessment of Trunk Control in Pediatric Subjects with Spinal Cord Injury using Smartphones
2021 – Kyle Deane, PhD
Shriners Hospitals for Children in Chicago
Appraisals of Disability Predictive of Psychosocial/Medical Outcomes in Individuals with Pediatric-Onset Spinal Cord Injury
2020 – Jennifer Coker, PhD
Craig Hospital, Engelwood, Colorado
Evaluation of a self-report method to obtain ASIA Impairment Scale in People with SCI who Reside in the Community.
2019 – Dr. Richard-Denis
Universite de Montreal, Canada
The impact of early spasticity on the intensive functional rehabilitation phase and community reintegration following traumatic spinal cord injury