Disdain for the Status Quo (Episode 66)

Jason and Mathew talk with Andrew Park, a clinician-researcher at Craig Rehabilitation Hospital in Denver, Colorado. Jason met Andrew while in Denver for one of U2FP’s Cure Advocacy Network stakeholder meetings last February. During that meeting, Andrew’s passion for his work became evident. In this podcast, we talk about what’s behind that passion, including: his path to becoming a researcher; his research interests and philosophy; a system-level path to functional recovery for the SCI community; and much more. Join us for this energetic and insightful discussion. Finally, we want to acknowledge that while Dr. Park works at Craig Hospital, our conversation was a reflection of Andrew’s personal opinions and not the opinions of Craig Hospital. Bio: Andrew Park, MD, is a physician in spinal cord injury (SCI) medicine and an early investigator at Craig Hospital. In his role, he provides clinical care to individuals with SCI on both an inpatient and outpatient basis. He performs translational research at Craig Hospital and holds joint appointments at the University of Colorado Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Veterans Affairs Spinal Cord Injury and Disorders Center (VA SCI/D). He is performing research at both Craig Hospital and VA SCI/D with parallel research focused on inflammatory mediators of secondary complications after SCI. These studies laid the groundwork for his research interests at the intersection of clinical care and understanding of mechanisms related to immune dysfunction after SCI.