Today, Senator Karin Housley (R-Stillwater), Chair of the Senate’s Committee on Aging and Long-Term Care, held a press conference to introduce a budget increase for the Spinal Cord Injury and Traumatic Brain Injury Research Grant (SCI and TBI) Program. This legislation seeks to increase the budget for this grant program to $5 million per year, in an effort to expand the program’s reach to more people living with paralysis.

In 2017, with funding from private donors, Mayo Clinic became the first medical center in the world to validate paralysis recovery results using a spinal neuromodulation treatment, and the first patient in that clinical trial walked independently for more than 100 yards. Funding for this research came in two parts: half from the state’s SCI and TBI research grant program, and the other half came from private donors. At the end of last month, Governor Walz released his budget, which included a recommendation for eliminating the funding for this program.

“We need to get this treatment to those living with paralysis and increasing the budget of this grant program is a step in the right direction,” said Senator Housley. “It’s so sad that the Governor wants to completely cut paralysis recovery from his budget. The Mayo Clinic has worked on this treatment since 2017, and it is unconscionable that we have a Minnesota-based businesses making such great gains in paralysis recovery, yet our Governor would leave Minnesotans with paralysis to suffer because he does not see the use in this funding. We need to expand the reach of this program, not eliminate its funding completely.”