The Hopkins Centre Showcased Leading Research and Collaboration at the 2025 Australian & New Zealand Spinal Cord Society Conference

Researchers and clinicians from The Hopkins Centre played a prominent role at the Australian & New Zealand Spinal Cord Society (ANZSCoS) 2025 Conference, held in Brisbane from 19–21 November. Their contributions spanned pre-conference workshops, free paper sessions, poster presentations and session chairs highlighting the Centre’s commitment to improving outcomes for people with spinal cord injury (SCI) through innovation, co-design, and multidisciplinary practice.

 

Pre-Conference Workshops – Wednesday 19 November

The conference opened with a series of pre-conference workshops featuring several Hopkins Centre researchers and collaborators.

Emily Allan and colleagues delivered a workshop on Innovative models of care: Providing a QuickStart in SCI, introducing attendees to the QuickStart model—a data-driven approach to spinal cord injury care in Queensland. Participants explored how clinical informatics and business intelligence tools were being used to support decision-making, resource optimisation, and improved patient outcomes. The session concluded with a panel Q&A and discussion of future directions for the model. This workshop also incorporated learnings from Emily Allans MSH SERTA-funded Hopkins Centre Clinical Fellowship.  

Dr Nicholas Aitcheson (Chair), Professor Michel Coppieters and Rebecca Madden led the interactive workshop When It Comes to Pain, Everything Matters, presenting an interdisciplinary, whole-person framework for managing persistent pain after SCI. Drawing on physiotherapy, occupational therapy and psychology, the session offered practical tools, case discussions and strategies grounded in research and clinical experience.

Dr Evgeniya Zakharova-Luneva, Ms Rachel Jones, Ms Soo Oh and colleagues facilitated Healing Under Pressure: Multidisciplinary Care for Complex SCI Pressure Injuries. The workshop provided an evidence-based update on contemporary approaches to managing complex pressure injuries, followed by case discussions that emphasised multidisciplinary problem-solving and real-world clinical challenges. It built on and incorporated ongoing findings from Dr Zakharova-Luneva’s MSH SERTA-funded Hopkins Centre Seed Grant 'Complications of post-flap surgery in people with spinal cord injury'.

A further workshop, Co-designing with Dignity, was delivered by Professor Tim Geraghty, Professor Louise Gustafsson, Dr Kelsey Chapman, Dr Delena Amsters, Dr Emily Bray and Hannah Simmonds. The session showcased how people with SCI, clinicians and researchers can collaborate meaningfully to produce research that is respectful, impactful and grounded in lived experience.

     

Conference Sessions – Thursday 20 November

During the Service Delivery free paper session, Samantha Borg presented Opioid prescribing following spinal cord injury: a qualitative analysis of experiences of healthcare providers and persons with lived experience. This work, part of her PhD though QUT, shed light on the complexities and challenges surrounding pain management and opioid use in the SCI community.   

 

Conference Sessions – Friday 21 November

The final day featured additional Hopkins Centre contributions across two themed free paper sessions.

In the Innovations in SCI Care stream, Glenn Verner-Wren presented an introduction to the Aus-InSCI Translation Project, outlining how findings from the Australian arm of the International Spinal Cord Injury (Aus-InSCI) Community Survey would be translated into meaningful, actionable outcomes to support people with SCI.

Poster Presentation

Hopkins Centre researchers Professor Tim Geraghty, Glenn Verner-Wren, Dr Michaela Filipcikova, Samantha Borg and Rachel Jones also presented a poster titled Real voices. Real change. Actioning the lived experience of people with SCI based on research from the Aus-InSCI Translation Project. The poster introduced the project and its mission - to translate findings from the Aus-InSCI Community Survey into meaningful, co-designed solutions by engaging stakeholders, informing policy, and supporting system-wide improvements for people with spinal cord injury and their families.  View poster here.

As a sponsor of the ANZCoS 2025 conference, The Hopkins Centre's Director Tim Geraghty and Dr Evgeniya Zakharova-Luneva also chaired a plenary session throughout the conference. The Hopkins Centre's exhibition booth was also highly attended and delegates enjoyed spinning the Hopkins research wheel. 

The important research presented by Hopkins members aligns closely with the objective of ANZSCoS, who are dedicated to research, innovation, education, service delivery, improvement, and advocacy in the area of spinal cord injuries. These research presentations and projects demonstrate The Hopkins Centre's continued commitment to bold ideas that can translate into better solutions for people with disability, their supports and the rehabilitation sector.