Q&A With Dr. John Corrigan
Categories: Research
By Steve Walsh, Brain Injury Association of America
John D. Corrigan, PhD, is the national research director for the Brain Injury Association of America and has four decades of experience treating persons with brain injury, studying their long-term outcomes, and educating the next generation of brain injury experts. Recently, Dr. Corrigan spoke with us about what drew him to the field, how research into brain injury has evolved over the years, and what people can do to support BIAA’s research efforts.
What interested you in pursuing a career in brain injury research?
My father was a researcher, a chemical engineer, and my mother was a social worker, the intersection of which set me on a course toward a career in research in behavioral science. My father experienced an anoxic brain injury in my teens, which spurred a lot of inherent interest that I didn’t know what to do with until I had the opportunity to become a rehabilitation psychologist. As a new PhD, I was hired as a faculty member in the department of physical medicine & rehabilitation at Ohio State in 1982 in order to join an interdisciplinary team of professionals who were designing a specialized inpatient rehabilitation program for people who had experienced severe TBI. People, particularly young people, were surviving injuries that in the past would have been fatal but for the emergence of seat belt use, adoption of neurosurgical procedures learned in the Vietnam War, and the proliferation of trauma systems in the U.S. As these young people emerged from coma, they were in a confused state and many were agitated, some combative. We opened the Brain Injury Unit at Ohio State in January 1983 — the first such specialized unit in the Midwest and one of only a handful nationwide. My research has grown out of the applied problems encountered treating this population: How to measure cognition in confused patients discretely enough to know if they are improving or declining? How to measure agitation so we would know if interventions were working? How to treat substance use disorders during and after acute care? How to structure community-based health and social services so that people with brain injuries could benefit? How to detect a person’s lifetime exposure to TBI? My research has always been a natural extension of my clinical service delivery and, more recently, policy development.
In your career as a researcher, what has changed the most in the way we think about and understand brain injury?
Over 40 years I have seen many “sea changes” in our field. Before 2007 we would have never imagined that the public-at-large would have awareness of TBI, but sports-related concussion and combatacquired TBI changed that. I have seen the interest expand from just traumatic brain injuries to other acquired brain injuries, including those from hypoxia/ anoxia that occurs from drug overdoses or strangulation in domestic violence, and, very recently, the persistent cognitive impairment from COVID. But the most significant shift I’ve seen is the recognition that some brain injuries need to be viewed as a chronic health condition and managed proactively just like we do for diabetes, heart disease, or COPD. I believe this recognition that the long-term effects of TBI are dynamic, not stable, has the potential to improve many, many lives.
What recent developments in brain injury research are most exciting to you?
I would again point to what is happening in the study of brain injury as a chronic health condition. We have much to learn about who is at risk, what co-morbid conditions are the most frequent or have the greatest effects, and how to support people so they can have their best possible life. But I think there will be extraordinary progress so that people can harness the dynamic nature of brain injury to promote improvement and stave off decline in function. In my lifetime I have seen at least two chronic health conditions go from dire diagnoses to highly manageable diseases – HIV and multiple sclerosis. We should want the same for brain injury. I would point out that many of us know several people who have had very severe brain injuries but today are living incredible lives with few outward signs of limitations due that injury. At the same time, we are acutely aware of the high association between history of brain injury and premature mortality, substance use disorders, mental health problems, unemployment, and incarceration. The challenge is to make the capability we know is there from the examples of people who have had fantastic outcomes a reality for the vast majority of people who experience brain injuries.
How does BIAA fit into the broader goals and efforts of brain injury research?
First and foremost, BIAA is the voice for people who have experienced brain injury and their families and loved ones. There needs to be a strong organization whose unflagging priority is the person with the lived experience. BIAA accomplishes much through its relationships with professionals, policymakers, and the healthcare industry, but it’s essential that there is a voice that always puts the person with lived experience first. BIAA has used that voice to shape the research priorities in our country and, more recently, to actually stimulate new research that will make a difference for people living with the effects of brain injury.
How can someone help support BIAA’s research efforts?
BIAA is in the midst of its fifth year of providing grants for promising research that addresses chronic brain injury. We are trying to attract investigators to this area of research by funding Dissertation Awards and giving seed grants to both young investigators and more experienced scholars who are wanting to explore a new direction of inquiry. Having just reviewed almost 50 Letters of Interest we received for this year’s competition I can say definitively that there are many really innovative ideas being pursued by very talented investigators. We could easily double or triple the number of awards we give and see no drop-off in the quality of projects we fund. So, a really straightforward way to support BIAA’s research efforts is to make a donation to the Research Fund, which is how the organization supports its grant-giving.
This article originally appeared in Volume 17, Issue 2 of THE Challenge! published in 2023.