News
Spinal Research attends the All-Party Parliamentary Group meeting
The most recent All-Party Parliamentary Group meeting in June was another well-attended affair.
The MPs and observers who came along heard two presentations, one about all things research-related from the charity Spinal Research and then one from us about our What Matters? survey and what this tells us about life for people living with a spinal cord injury in 2023.
The presentation from Harvey Sihota, CEO at Spinal Research was excellent, taking a potentially complicated subject matter and making it as simple as possible for everyone to understand. Although mainstream publicity on research progress always seems to revolve around walking, there’s clearly loads going on in the spinal research arena and Harvey’s presentation was a powerful reminder of the progress that’s been made in recent years as well as the distance still to be travelled before a ‘cure’ can be found. If you’d like to see the PowerPoint presentation that Harvey delivered, it can be found here:
This was followed by Dave Bracher, our campaigns manager, speaking about the outcomes of the What Matters? 2023 survey. Almost a thousand people completed the survey, which as in previous years provides a tremendous insight into the issues that make a difference to the lives of people living with a spinal cord injury. Aside from the domains of Body, Mind and Life, the survey also showed the impact of the cost-of-living crisis and highlighted the concerns people have about what next winter could look like. We use this information to inform our services and campaigning, and the full report is publicly available and can be downloaded from our website.
Many thanks if you wrote to your MP to encourage them to attend the APPG meeting, your support remains absolutely invaluable. The next APPG meeting will be in September, and more details will follow in due course.