October 2025

Pain Relief Funding

Vitaly Napadow, PhD, LAc, (pictured above, left) and his colleagues at the Scott Schoen and Nancy Adams Discovery Center for Chronic Pain Recovery have recently received a number of government and private foundation grants for their innovative research to better understand and uncover novel treatments for pain. Dr. Napadow, the Center’s Director, received a new award from the Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine (KIOM) for a three-year study on how to boost mind–body mechanisms to improve outcomes for migraine and functional dyspepsia. KIOM is dedicated to supporting and conducting research related to traditional medicine techniques originating in ancient Asian cultures, and Dr. Napadow and his team have had a longstanding collaborative relationship with the Institute, including providing expertise and training to their neuroimaging group. Last year, he spoke at KIOM’s 30th Anniversary about the history of the KIOM-Spaulding partnership and its ongoing potential to advance pain science.  

Jeungchan Lee, PhD, (pictured above, right) and Alessandra Anzolin, PhD, (pictured below), lead researchers in the Napadow Lab, both recently received major federal grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Lee’s award from the NIH’s National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases will support his ongoing work using real-time functional MRI (fMRI) to understand the brain processes involved in self-regulation—the ability to manage thoughts, emotions, and behaviors to achieve desired goals. Self-regulation is thought to play a key role in the effectiveness of non-pharmacologic treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

“Furthering our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying self-regulation will enable clinicians to boost the efficacy of CBT and facilitate the development of multimodal treatment packages, while empowering patients to gain control over their cognitive and emotional processes.” — Dr. Jeungchan Lee

Dr. Anzolin’s award from the NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health will support a study to investigate how the brains of patients and clinicians interrelate during therapeutic encounters. Using EEG hyperscanning, a leading-edge technique that records brain activity from two or more people simultaneously, her team will capture the brain synchronization between patients and clinicians as they interact. This innovative approach offers a powerful window into the neurologic foundations of empathy and communication. The study will focus on patients with fibromyalgia, investigating whether targeted cognitive training can strengthen the patient–clinician therapeutic relationship and improve pain outcomes. Dr. Anzolin also received a private grant from the Emerald Gate Charitable Trust for a related project to create the largest and most rigorous open data repository of EEG hyperscanning datasets with the aim of developing inter-brain connectivity measures based on theoretical modeling and artificial intelligence.

Spotlight Video:

Vitaly Napadow, PhD, LAc

Director, Schoen and Adams Discovery Center for Chronic Pain Recovery

Click below to watch the first installment of our new video series to highlight the personal side of Spaulding’s research and what drives our investigators in their scientific pursuits. Hear from Dr. Vitaly Napadow about how his own mountain biking injury and experience as a Spaulding patient gave him a new appreciation for the chronic pain patients he studies. Learn more about his team’s use of neuroimaging to better understand how and why people manifest pain, with the ultimate goal of developing more effective treatments—and how philanthropic support helps advance his innovative work.

Giving Kids Strength

On October 9, Spaulding held its second annual Strength Soirée, a fundraiser to support our multidisciplinary Pediatric Rehabilitation Program, which offers the most advanced strategies for the evaluation and management of complex conditions affecting function in children of all ages. Co-chaired by Dan Jones and Matt Pullen (pictured right) and emceed by WBZ-TV News Anchor Lisa Hughes, (pictured below) this enormously successful event raised almost $670,000.

In his remarks, Brian D. Wishart, DO, MMS, who became the Chief of Pediatric Rehabilitation at Spaulding this past March, shared that a key component of his vision is to expand the program’s research efforts to ensure our clinical care is evidence-based, to improve kids’ access to the latest therapies, and to enable other pediatric programs to benefit from our hospital’s unique expertise.

For example, the team recently published a paper in the journal Archives of Rehabilitation Research and Clinical Translation, which found that pediatric inpatient rehabilitation significantly improved functional outcomes in children with neurologic impairments caused by stroke. This study encompasses the largest retrospective cohort of inpatient rehabilitation patients with childhood stroke to date and provides critical baseline metrics for future, more targeted prospective studies on pediatric rehabilitation interventions. Dr. Wishart’s co-authors on the paper include first author Jennifer Wu, MD, PhD, and trainee fellows Deena Godfrey, MD; and Patricia Orme, MD.  

Pediatric Rehabilitation Chief Dr. Brian Wishart shares his vision at the Strength Soirée.

And the Academy Award Goes to...

Spaulding had its customary strong presence at this year’s American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (AAPM&R) Annual Assembly, which took place this month in Salt Lake City, UT. This meeting is considered the premier educational and networking event in physiatry and rehabilitation medicine. Notably, three Spaulding physician–researchers were recognized with 2025 awards for their important contributions to the field:  

Nicole Katz, MD



Foundation for PM&R Masterson ERF New Investigator Research Grant

Dr. Katz is a Sports Medicine Fellow at Spaulding. This grant provides critical early-career funding to support a researcher in physical medicine and rehabilitation. This grant will support her work to assess the presence and mechanistic impact of the hormone relaxin-2 in knee joint synovial fluid in the pathogenesis of knee osteoarthritis (KOA). The objective is to better understand the increased risk of KOA in female individuals. This study leverages the MGB Sports StarNet biorepository in collaboration with Spaulding’s Discovery Center for Musculoskeletal Recovery. 

Chloe Slocum, MD, MPH

Distinguished Public Service, Health Equity, and Advocacy Award

A specialist in neuro-recovery, Dr. Slocum is Director of Health Policy at Spaulding and leads our Spinal Cord Injury Model System. This award recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to improving the quality of life for people with disabilities and other vulnerable populations through public service. Dr. Slocum is a vocal and influential advocate to national and federal policymakers for improved access to inpatient rehabilitation care, meaningful updates to quality measures, and sensible payment reforms (see below).

Adam Tenforde, MD

Scott Nadler PASSOR Musculoskeletal Research Grant

An expert in non-surgical sports medicine, Dr. Tenforde is Medical Director of the Spaulding National Running Center and Director of Shockwave Medicine. This grant is to be used as seed money for research related to musculoskeletal rehabilitation. Dr. Tenforde’s funding will support a novel investigation of the influence of shockwave, platelet-rich plasma, or the combination of these innovative non-surgical treatments in the management of mid-portion Achilles tendinopathy in active adults.

Getting into High School Athletes’ Heads

This month, Dan Daneshvar, MD, PhD, (pictured above), a lead researcher in Spaulding’s Discovery Center for Brain Injury and Concussion Recovery, appeared in a TIME magazine article highlighting safety issues for high school football players around brain injury, particularly with regard to the development of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Dr. Daneshvar has conducted seminal research on what causes CTE, a degenerative brain disease resulting from repeated blows to the head, and is deeply engaged in designing evidence-based concussion education and intervention efforts across a range of sports. Recently he was senior author on a paper in the journal PM&R that explored the use of a game simulation to assess the efficacy of concussion reporting in high school football players. It is estimated that more than a million youth concussions go unreported each year. The study found that a novel, first-person interactive game experience showed promise in evaluating the relationship between players’ intent to report a concussion and their actual behavior. Read more on this research in TeachAids.  

Role of Innovation

Randy Trumbower, PT, PhD, Director of the Paula Ness Speers and Mark S. Speers Discovery Center for Spinal Cord Injury Recovery, was nominated and selected as the Innovation Champion for Harvard Medical School’s Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Spaulding. In this role, Dr. Trumbower is charged with advocating for innovators, fostering collaboration, and driving engagement to accelerate the development and implementation of transformative ideas into patient care across the Mass General Brigham system. Dr. Trumbower is also Executive Director of the Travis Roy Center for Enhanced Independence at Spaulding.  

Listen Up

Check out recent episodes of Spaulding’s Finding Strength podcast on traumatic brain injury (TBI) and stroke, which include discussions with Spaulding experts on the latest science to improve care. Conversations on Severe Traumatic Brain Injury and Life-Sustaining Treatment covers the evolving science of evaluating prognosis in TBI and the impact of early decisions to withdraw life-sustaining treatment. Systems Science and the Complex Healthcare Journey of People with Aphasia highlights how scientific methods to analyze care delivery and outcomes can improve treatment for individuals with cognitive-communication abilities like aphasia.

Spaulding Director of Health Policy Chloe Slocum, MD, MPH, who also leads our Spinal Cord Injury Model System, recently gave oral testimony to the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Health Care Financing in support of “An Act Improving Access to Post Acute Services” (House Bill 1412 and Senate Bill 903). “By decreasing the bottleneck of patients awaiting post-acute care services, [the bills] will help provide meaningful access to these critically important services in a more efficient and equitable manner, giving others the chance to obtain the necessary care and skills that they need to return to the community and hopefully thrive, even in the context of complex and chronic medical conditions,” said Dr. Slocum. You can watch her full testimony here.  

Sabrina Paganoni, MD, PhD, was one of four Mass General Brigham–affiliated faculty recently elected to the National Academy of Medicine, one of the highest honors in the field of healthcare and medical science. Dr. Paganoni, who holds dual appointments at Spaulding and Massachusetts General Hospital, was recognized for her paradigm-shifting research in ALS and related innovations in national clinical trial development and precision medicine. 

Zacharia Isaac, MD, was recently appointed to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) Endowed Chair in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in recognition of his exceptional expertise in non-operative spine care and interventional physiatry. Dr. Isaac, who is affiliated with both Spaulding and BWH, focuses on patient education, exercise therapy, medication, and other minimally invasive approaches to treat pain and restore function.  

Spotlight on Spaulding Science is a quarterly e-newsletter for donors and friends of the Schoen Adams Research Institute at Spaulding Rehabilitation. For questions or to submit your own research news item, please contact: Alexandra Molloy at amolloy@mgb.org.