JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (Jan. 27, 2010) – Secretary of State Robin Carnahan today announced that the Missouri State Archives, a division of her office, awarded a $1,042 grant to the Still National Osteopathic Museum and International Center for Osteopathic Health History.

The grant will be used to purchase specialized equipment to help ensure that the museum’s nearly 30,000-item collection is preserved. The museum houses artifacts and documents, such as historical osteopathic records, journals and books, which help recount the story of osteopathic medicine. From 2008-2009, about 7,900 people visited the museum, which is located in Kirksville, and 23,600 people visited the museum’s website (www.atsu.edu/museum).

“Missouri’s remarkable history needs to be preserved for future generations,” Carnahan said. “I am pleased to support local institutions across the state in their efforts to protect and make available the records of our past.”

The grant to the Still National Osteopathic Museum and International Center for Osteopathic Health History is part of $65,000 awarded to the Missouri State Archives by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to promote the preservation and availability of Missouri’s historical records. The majority of these funds have been awarded to local and regional institutions across the state for preservation and access projects.

“The funding to purchase an additional hygrothermograph is extremely timely, as the museum has expanded its collection space by 3,000 square feet in the last few months,” said Jason Haxton, director of the Still National Osteopathic Museum. “This purchase will help us measure and record the atmospheric humidity and temperature of the new space to better protect the historical collections unique to the founding of osteopathic medicine in northeast Missouri.”

Any public or private records repositories across the state that care for documents of significant historical value could have requested funds for records management and preservation projects. The projects include conservation services, consulting, indexing and describing collections, and the purchase of archival supplies and equipment. Grant recipients have one year to complete their projects and submit reports of their results.

Since 2001, similar grants totaling more than $560,000 have been awarded to Missouri’s historical records repositories through the Missouri Historical Records Grant Program (MHRGP). To learn more about the grant program, visit www.sos.mo.gov/archives/mhrab/guidelines.asp.

For more information about this grant, contact Debra Loguda-Summers, curator of the Still National Osteopathic Museum-International Center for Osteopathic History, at 660.626.2359 or dsummers@atsu.edu.

To find out more about Missouri’s Secretary of State’s office, visit www.sos.mo.gov.

The Still National Osteopathic Museum announced that their final grant for 2009 is a $6,000 award from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

NEH is an independent grant-making federal agency dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The funds will be used for shelving to house artifacts and museum records. NEH awarded $20 million to more than 300 projects in 2009. This is the first year that the grant was awarded to the museum.

Jason Haxton, director of the Still National Osteopathic Museum, is pleased with the first-time award. “The NEH looks for ways to preserve culture and history across the United States,” he said. “For us, it gives shelving to house about 10,000 artifacts, covering about 1,500 square feet of much needed space.”

In all, the museum received a total of eight grants in 2009, totaling more than $205,000. These funds cover numerous expenses from preservation to restoration and storage.

“We have a wonderful ATSU (A.T. Still University) grant department,” Haxton said. “Their work with the museum curator is the reason that we are so successful.”

In addition to the 2009 grants, the museum received more than $100,000 of donations. These funds are being used to expand the museum galleries and to archive, catalog, and house the always growing collection.

“We hope to have one-third of our collection archived online by the end of 2010,” Haxton said. “It will allow outsiders to use us as a real resource of Osteopathic history without having to make the trip.

The museum is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, with extend hours on Thursday until 7 p.m., and 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday. To find out more, visit www.atsu.edu/museum.

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at www.neh.gov.

New project to enhance CORE-AT practice-based research network

Tamara Valovich McLeod, Ph.D., ATC

MESA, Ariz. – A.T. Still University’s Arizona School of Health Sciences (ATSU-ASHS) athletic training program received a $102,153 grant for a new research project that will further enhance its growing body of research of sport-related injuries in young athletes. The grant was recently approved by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE).

“We are thrilled that our grant received full funding,” said Tamara Valovich McLeod, Ph.D., ATC, principal investigator and ATSU-ASHS athletic training associate professor. “This new research project will allow ATSU-ASHS to continue work in determining how concussion affects young athletes’ lives outside of sports, including school, relationships with friends and family, and emotional and social aspects of their lives. All of these areas are important in providing whole person athletic training services.”

The project, titled “The Effect of Sport-Related Concussion on Cognition, Balance, Symptoms and Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) in Adolescent Athletes,” is a two-year project that aims to assess the immediate and prolonged effects of concussion on HRQOL in adolescent athletes; assess the relationship between the measures of impairment and disability; compare the effect of sport-related concussion and musculoskeletal injury on HRQOL in adolescent athletes within the first 10 days post-injury; and collect “sport concussion impact” narratives from adolescents with sport-related concussion, identify the meanings they attribute to that concussion, and qualitatively determine the affects of concussion on their HRQOL.

Frederick Mueller, Ph.D., NOCSAE research director and University of North Carolina department of exercise and sports science professor, said that sport-related concussions are a major concern in all levels of sports participation, and especially for high school athletes. “The research grant approved for funding by Tamara McLeod of A.T. Still University is another major step in helping to reduce concussion injuries in adolescent athletes,” he said.

“There have always been concerns with the quality of life related to athletes with concussion injuries and their recovery period, and Dr. McLeod’s research will play a major role in this area,” Dr. Mueller continued. “The NOCSAE board of directors is looking forward to the recommendations made by Dr. McLeod at the conclusion of her research project.”

According to Dr. Mueller, NOCSAE was formed in 1969 to address the problem of brain injuries in sports and has been involved in funding research for many years. NOCSAE grant applications are highly competitive and are reviewed by the leading sports medicine experts in the country.

“This is a timely public safety issue for the parents, coaches, and healthcare providers of our young athletes,” said Craig M. Phelps, D.O., FAOASM, ATSU-Arizona provost and primary care physician for the Phoenix Suns and Mercury. “We are very grateful that A.T. Still University has an opportunity to play a significant role in providing research and finding answers.”

Along with serving as the project’s principal investigator, Dr. McLeod is also director of ATSU-ASHS interdisciplinary research laboratory and director of the Clinical Outcomes Research Education for Athletic Trainers (CORE-AT) practice-based research network. She has gained a national reputation as an expert clinician, researcher, consultant, and medical educator in the area of sports concussion, and her research has provided insight into the best management practices for young athletes recovering from concussion.

Co-investigators on the project include ASHS-ATSU athletic training faculty members Drs. Alison Snyder, John Parsons, and Curt Bay, as well as consultant Anikar Chhabra, M.D., of The Orthopedic Clinic Association in Phoenix, Ariz.

Funds from the project will allow for a concussion module to be added to the athletic training program’s existing CORE-AT practice-based research network, a project that aims to educate and train post-professional athletic training students in the use of technology for the collection of healthcare outcomes data. The CORE-AT system, which was started with internal ATSU strategic research funds in 2006, has continued to build with external grants, including a $107,012 grant from the National Athletic Trainers’ Association Research and Education Foundation in 2008.

MESA, Ariz. (Mar. 18, 2009) – A team from A.T. Still University’s Arizona School of Health Sciences (ATSU-ASHS) was recently awarded a $10,000 grant by the National Headache Foundation for a research project entitled “The effect of sport-related concussion on headache- and health-related quality of life in children and adolescents.”

According to Tamara Vaolvich McLeod, Ph.D., ATC, associate professor of athletic training at ATSU-ASHS and principal investigator in the project, the broad, long-term objective of the research will be to improve the health-related quality of life of individuals following sport-related concussion during childhood and adolescence. Co-investigators on the project include ATSU-ASHS interdisciplinary health science team members Curt Bay, Ph.D., associate professor; John Parsons, M.S., ATC, assistant professor; and Alison Snyder, Ph.D., ATC, assistant professor.

“This grant will help to advance the sports medicine communities’ understanding of how sport-related concussions impact the whole person, making this project both innovative and consistent with the osteopathic principles that define ATSU,” said Eric Sauers, Ph.D., ATC, ATSU-ASHS athletic training program director and chair of the department of interdisciplinary health sciences. “This research could lead to the development of new measurement instruments for assessing this vital outcome in a vulnerable population.”

The National Headache Foundation, founded in 1970, is a non-profit organization which exists to enhance the healthcare of headache sufferers. It is a source of help to sufferers’ families, physicians who treat headache sufferers, allied healthcare professionals and to the public. The NHF accomplishes its mission by providing educational and informational resources, supporting headache research and advocating for the understanding of headache as a legitimate neurobiological disease.

KIRKSVILLE, Mo. (Jan. 28, 2009) – The Missouri State Library Office of the Secretary of State (Library Services and Technology Act Federal Grant Program) has awarded the Still National Osteopathic Museum’s International Center for Osteopathic History and the A.T. Still Memorial Library $38,761 to transcribe and digitize the historical handwritten personal papers of Andrew Taylor Still, M.D., D.O., the founder of osteopathy.

According to Debra Loguda-Summers, museum curator and project director, the museum and library have shared responsibilities for maintaining the historic documents represented by Dr. Still’s papers and have experienced an ever-increasing demand for access to his correspondence, manuscripts, notes, Civil War records, and documents reflecting his philosophy, holistic perception of patients, and his unique, homespun approach to both.

“This grant will allow us to transcribe and place online with the Missouri Digital Heritage database more than 560 pages of Dr. Still’s documents for patrons throughout Missouri and the world,” said Loguda-Summers.

The project, which begins in February, is scheduled to be completed by January 2010. Visit http://www.sos.mo.gov/mdh/ for more information on the Missouri Digital Heritage Database. This project is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the Missouri State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State.