April 4, 2025
Mobilizing Our Community
Matthew Rodreick
We are continuing to mobilize our community to fight back against the cuts to the Defense Department's Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) which led to the zeroing out of the $40 million for the Spinal Cord Injury Research Program (SCIRP). This program uniquely involved the participation of many of our SCI community advocates to provide lived experience input.
Last week we organized a meeting attended by leaders from The Craig H Neilsen Foundation, United Spinal, The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, The North American SCI Consortium, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Wings 4 Life and The Shepherd Center. We met to share information, strategize and mobilize our community to fight back. At the time, there was no formal path forward...now there is an emerging strategy.
We thought spring was a great time to start fresh with a new, more robust donor management system.
We were informed last night that Senator Chris Coons (DE) and Senator Angela Alsobrooks (MD) will be offering an amendment to the Senate Budget Resolution. They are still working on text and we will share it with you as soon as we see it. Basically, it calls on the Senate reconciliation process to fully restore the 57% cut from CDMRP.
Contact your own Senators today. Ask them to “Please support the Coons-Alsobrooks amendment to fully restore the 57% in funding cut from the CDMRP." You can look up your Senators’ contact information here if you don’t know it.
Once you’ve done that, please contact or call Senator Angela Alsobrooks (ph: 202-224-4524 | contact form) and Senator Chris Coons (ph: (202) 224-5042 | contact form) to thank them for the amendment.
Join us,
