More than 400 healthcare professionals from across the United States gathered at the Horseshoe Hotel in Las Vegas this week for Paralyzed Veterans of America's 2026 Healthcare Summit + Expo, a four-day event running through Wednesday, September 2, focused on emerging research and care for people living with spinal cord injuries, MS, and ALS. VA Secretary Doug Collins is taking part in the summit, which opened with a welcome reception on Sunday and features 110 speakers addressing everything from rehabilitation technology to primary care access.
The event, detailed in a release from PR Newswire, comes from Paralyzed Veterans of America, a nonprofit founded in 1946 that now serves people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico through more than 70 offices and 33 chapters. Robert Thomas, a PVA representative, framed the stakes of the gathering simply: healthcare for veterans with traumatic spinal cord injuries, MS, and ALS “begins before injury or diagnosis and continues through rehabilitation and life at home,” he said, according to the same release. Lindsay Perlman, director of PVA's research and education department, added that people living with these conditions “deserve care that keeps pace with the latest advances.”
A Federally Chartered Watchdog With Rare Access
Congress granted Paralyzed Veterans of America its federal charter in 1971 under Public Law 92-93, according to a report from Every CRS Report, giving the organization statutory standing that few veteran advocacy groups hold. That charter underpins PVA's access to all 25 VA spinal cord injury and disorders centers nationwide, where the organization monitors care quality. The VA's spinal cord system is enormous by any measure: it is the world's largest integrated network of its kind, caring for more than 27,000 veterans annually through a hub-and-spoke model of 25 regional centers and over 130 local primary care teams, per the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
That scale matters because reliance on VA care among this population is nearly total. A House Committee on Veterans' Affairs inquiry found the VA's Spinal Cord Injury Registry listed 22,721 living veterans with spinal cord injuries and disorders, with 97 percent receiving VA healthcare within a 12-month period. The same congressional oversight investigation revealed chronic understaffing in VA spinal cord injury units, with Paralyzed Veterans of America testifying that provider vacancy rates reached as high as 30 percent, sometimes forcing VA medical centers to reassign specialized SCI staff to other departments.
Clinicians From Coast to Coast Share the Stage
Several VA clinicians are among the speakers highlighted at the summit, illustrating the breadth of the hub-and-spoke system in practice. Marinella Galea, who has more than two decades of leadership in specialized SCI/D care, research, education, and patient safety, serves as chief of spinal cord injury and disorders at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in Bronx, New York. Felicia Skelton, a physician and faculty investigator at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston, Texas, has advanced SCI primary care, patient safety, and virtual access through research and innovative care models.
Beth Whittington, a neurologist at the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis, Indiana, expanded access to specialized interdisciplinary ALS care through telehealth. In Aurora, Colorado, Liam Kiernan, a clinical specialist physical therapist at the Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center, has brought advanced rehabilitation technologies into clinical practice and contributed to research, education, and mentorship. Nicholas Wendel, a physical therapy clinical specialist at VA Boston Health Care System's West Roxbury VA in Massachusetts, uses evidence-based rehabilitation and innovative technologies to increase veterans' mobility and independence, while Ginger Willoughby, an inpatient nurse care coordinator at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center in Ohio, has strengthened care coordination, quality improvement, caregiver education, and staff development. All six clinicians are set to be honored with PVA's Clinical Excellence Awards on September 2.
Technology on Display, and the Cost of Waiting
The summit's roughly 60 exhibitors and expanded breakout programming, reported separately by the North American Spinal Cord Injury Consortium as including five general plenary sessions and 57 discipline-specific tracks for an expected 800 healthcare professionals, showcase how far treatment technology has moved. Sponsors include Biogen, First Nation Group, Genentech, Maxim Healthcare, NMEDA, Novartis, ONWARD Medical Inc., Permobil, Quantum, and Shionogi. ONWARD Medical, one of the summit's sponsors, won expanded FDA clearance in November 2025 for its ARC-EX non-invasive spinal cord stimulation device, now approved for take-home use to improve hand strength and sensation in patients with incomplete cervical spinal injuries, according to a filing reported by GlobeNewswire.
The financial stakes behind that innovation are steep. Lifetime direct medical and care costs for a 25-year-old surviving a high cervical spinal cord injury exceed $6.2 million, excluding lost wages, according to 2025 benchmark statistics cited by the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center. Nationally, federal health data estimates that between 249,000 and 363,000 Americans live with spinal cord injuries, with roughly 17,730 new traumatic injuries occurring each year, about 80 percent of them affecting males, per the same VA research office.
Setting the Clinical Standard
Since 1995, PVA has managed and funded the Consortium for Spinal Cord Medicine, which unites 23 national health, payer, and consumer organizations to produce and update evidence-based clinical practice guidelines, according to Paralyzed Veterans of America. That guideline-setting role connects directly to the summit's mission: PVA invests in research, clinical education, advocacy, and innovation, and funds research and education seeking cures and improved care for people with paralysis.
The Las Vegas gathering follows a stretch of real-world progress and setbacks in veteran spinal care. Hoodline previously reported that the VA finally finished a delayed San Diego facility, a $205 million, 197,000-square-foot, 50-bed replacement spinal cord injury center accepted by the VA in July after 16 years of PVA advocacy, with patient move-in expected in early 2027 to serve 850 veterans across Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada. Media inquiries about the summit can be directed to PVA media contact Oname Thompson at 703-864-5980.
