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Trainer, Lead Coach and Co-Investigator
Spinal Cord Injury Association of CT, a Chapter of United Spinal Association
I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
Sarah Everhart Skeels, MPH, Co-I and Lead Trainer in the SCI&U student, member of Spinal Cord Injury Association of Connecticut. Sarah has used over 32 years of experience of living with and managing a spinal cord injury to help inform and direct research on a number of interdisciplinary research teams focused on promoting health and wellness for persons with neurological impairments.
As a Co-I, Sarah just completed the implementation phase and is now in the data analysis phase of a project aimed to expand on previous research (“My Care My Call”) called “An online self-management program for spinal cord injury: SCI&U”. Sarah consulted with designing the protocol, process and procedures in addition to acting as a Peer Health Coach, utilizing this role to support and coach peers living with SCI to improve self-management skills related to their SCI via a virtual platform that includes secure videoconferencing for coaching calls. Additionally, she is a Co-I in another project, Testing the Effectiveness of a Peer Health Coaching Tool to Increase Exercise Among Adolescents with Disabilities, in which she trained young adults with neurological diagnoses to be Health Coaches to support adolescents living with Spina Bifida and Cerebral Palsy to increase their daily Physical Activity levels. She is conducting individual interviews with study participants and peer health coaches and leading the qualitative data analysis to better understand the context of these experiences.
Ms. Everhart Skeels is experienced in post-acute rehabilitation for those living with SCI, having developed and directed second-stage rehabilitation programs for adults and adolescents with neurological impairments, and summer sports camps for children with physical disabilities. Key aspects of this programming consistently incorporated peer mentoring. Sarah holds lecturing positions at Brown and Tufts Universities, where she teaches courses in Disability Studies, Community-Based programming, Interactive Reasoning and Health Promotion and Disability.
