Kessler Foundation Helps Stroke Victims Reclaim Independence

Steve Adubato goes on-location to the Kessler Foundation’s "Life After Stroke" event to speak with Elaine Katz, Senior VP of Grants and Communications, and William “Bo” James, a stroke robotic exoskeleton participant, about the importance of stroke research being conducted and how individuals are regaining their independence.

#2591 11/12/2016

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"We are pleased to be speaking to Elaine Katz from Kessler Foundation. We just finished up this after, Life After Stroke Innovations and Research: Reclaiming Life and Regaining Independence. Elaine, we just had a powerful conversation, dialogue, not just with the audience, but with these great panelists, talking about life after stroke. What's your biggest takeaway from this? I think the biggest takeaway is that it's so important after research to get it right into practice, and the advantage of Kessler Foundation is what we're able to do the research, and with our relationship with Kessler Institute, take it right into a clinical setting. Yeah. You know what's so interesting about this? You think you know the questions that are gonna be asked, and we had an open forum, and we were talking about life after stroke, regaining your life after stroke, and the value of research. It's fascinating, because this work is not being done in this way anywhere across the country? Well that's one advantage we have at Kessler Foundation is that we're doing new innovative research, and at the same time, we're disseminating it, not only in the United States, of therapists, but also internationally, so our research is not, we're known as Kessler Foundation, and Kessler Institute, our relationship in New Jersey, but we're way beyond that. We have our international reputation for our scientists. We've had this discussion before when you were in the studio with us, remind folks, and again, folks know that we are, our production operation, our not for profit production operation is one of the grantees, but some of the grantees that you support are really directly involved in helping those who are dealing with all kinds of challenges, correct? Correct. I think we have our research side of the foundation, and then we have our program side, which works with the organizations to increase employment, and then we also have grant making that helps people in sports and recreation and also in other therapies that may be reimbursed by insurance. Yeah. One of the pieces that's interesting as you talk about life after stroke, and one of the areas that's fascinating to me is that people who ask questions today, not just about life after stroke, but they wanted to understand risk factors associated with stroke and... and "What can I do?" We're you surprised at that? I think I was very surprised that it was just exercise could really diminish your chance of stroke, but really, I think what came out of the discussion is that disability can happen to any of us, it's a club we can join at any point in our lives..."