Four days of interdisciplinary spinal cord injury and disease education, carrying up to 25 continuing education contact hours across nursing, therapy, psychology, social work, case management, and physician tracks.
The Academy of Spinal Cord Injury Professionals (ASCIP) is built around a plain fact about spinal cord injury (SCI) care. It is delivered by teams, not by single disciplines. ASCIP covers both injury and disease, written throughout its program as SCI/D, and organizes its membership into four professional sections, the American Paraplegia Society, the Spinal Cord Injury Nurses section, the Psychologists, Social Workers and Counselors section, and the Therapy Leadership Council. The 2026 Educational Conference and Expo is the one week of the year those four groups sit in the same program.
The 2026 draft agenda spans a Sunday pre-conference day through Wednesday midday, with as many as five concurrent rooms at a time. Content spans neurogenic bladder and neurourology, spasticity management, respiratory and tracheostomy care in tetraplegia, upper extremity reconstruction, exoskeletons and upright mobility, transcutaneous spinal stimulation, vagus nerve stimulation, adaptive sports seating, sexual health, sleep disordered breathing, and difficult International Standards for Neurological Classification of Spinal Cord Injury (ISNCSCI) cases.
For people living with SCI, the value of a clinical meeting like this one is downstream and concrete. The people in these rooms are the ones who set catheterization routines, configure seating, screen for autonomic and respiratory complications, and write discharge plans. ASCIP 2026 carries up to 25.0 continuing education contact hours, so what gets presented in Salt Lake City tends to show up in clinics over the following year.
Sunday, September 6 is a full pre-conference day of multi-hour workshops, including upper extremity reconstruction in tetraplegia, an interdisciplinary training workshop on caring for people with tetraplegia and a tracheostomy, integrated spasticity care across the continuum, and an early career and trainee workshop on the job search, curriculum vitae development, and negotiation.
The keynote opens Monday morning in Imperial A/B. The program also carries the Donald Munro Award Lecture, the Audrey Nelson Award Lecture, the Essie Morgan Award Lecture, the Therapy Leadership Council Distinguished Lecture, the Anthony DeMarco Award Lecture, the James J Peters Award Lecture, and the Jayanthi Charitable Foundation Lecture.
Tuesday and Wednesday run up to five parallel rooms, mixing 60 minute clinical sessions with blocks of 15 and 30 minute research presentations. Tracks are grouped by theme rather than by discipline, so a nurse, a therapist, and a physician often end up in the same room.
The exhibit hall occupies Grand B/C on Tuesday and Wednesday, with breakfast and lunch served there. The Posters and Exhibit Hall Reception runs Tuesday evening from 5:15 to 7:00 PM, which is the main window for seeing the poster research alongside the vendors.
ASCIP designates the meeting for up to 25.0 contact hours at an intermediate level, with credit offered for nurses, occupational therapists, physicians, psychologists, speech language professionals, case managers, and disability management specialists. Some approvals were still pending at the time of writing, and a few sessions carry therapy credit only.
The 2026 ASCIP Innovation Lab is scheduled as a Tuesday afternoon session. It sits alongside related program content on 3D printing, adaptive gaming, and equipment fabrication, and connects to the Academy's members-only fabrication depository.
A neurourology question and answer session covers hot topics with practical learning, and a separate session pairs bladder management with wheelchair configuration for intermittent catheterization. Research presentations cover bowel preparation for colonoscopy in patients with SCI and periprocedural risk in veterans.
Sessions cover transcutaneous spinal stimulation mechanisms and home-based application, paired vagus nerve stimulation rehabilitation in cervical SCI, evidence-guided neuromodulation patient selection and targeting, and two paired reports on outcomes from a self-balancing exoskeleton trial in high neurological SCI.
Late-onset respiratory failure in chronic SCI, blood pressure dysregulation and its association with health-related quality of life, emergency department visits tied to blood pressure, sleep disordered breathing screening for therapists, and speech and respiratory care during ventilator weaning.
Mental health after SCI, preliminary results from a national survey on interpersonal violence against people with SCI, injustice appraisal in newly acquired injury, parenting after SCI, peer health coaching models, readiness for peer support, social networks, sexual health across the continuum of care, and the ethics of hastening death.
A large share of the program reports on veterans with SCI/D: home care utilization, living setting and its association with depression, vocational rehabilitation from the veteran's own point of view, new onset injury from violence-related causes, and technology-driven approaches to health and wellness.
Why You Should Be Part of ASCIP
Florian Thomas, MD, a longtime ASCIP member, describes how the Academy changed his practice of medicine. ASCIP hosts this on its own conference page, and it answers in a few minutes what a written program cannot, which is what four days in a room with this particular group of clinicians does to the way you work afterward.
Past President, North American Spinal Cord Injury Consortium (NASCIC)
ASCIP's draft agenda names Jen French as the 2026 keynote speaker. The keynote opens the first full conference day on Monday morning, directly after the welcome, announcements, and awards block that includes the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation Creativity Award honoring David Gater.
French is a past president of NASCIC, which puts a familiar voice in front of the interdisciplinary clinical audience ASCIP convenes. Having someone from the consortium open the meeting keeps the community perspective in the room for the four days of clinical and research sessions that follow.
The keynote title and abstract were not published on ASCIP's agenda at the time this listing was prepared. ASCIP updates the working agenda as the program is finalized, so check the official agenda page for the confirmed title.
View the Draft AgendaRegistration is open. Accessible hotel rooms can be requested during the registration process, and all conference fees are non-refundable.
520 South State Street, Salt Lake City, Utah 84111
The whole meeting is under one roof. General sessions run in Imperial A/B, concurrent tracks in Grand A, Grand D, Imperial C and Imperial D, and the exhibit hall in Grand B/C.
ASCIP holds a discounted room block at the Grand America. Accessible guest rooms are available, and ASCIP asks attendees to select that option when registering for the conference.
Note: ASCIP's room block at the Grand America closes August 14, 2026. Reservations made after that date fall under the hotel's standard rates and availability. Room block questions go to the ASCIP office.
The Grand America sits in downtown Salt Lake City at 520 South State Street, served by Salt Lake City International Airport. ASCIP is also arranging optional post-conference activities in the surrounding area, including Snowbird and the Park City Olympic Village, with pre-registration required and fees that may apply.
Bladder care threads through the ASCIP 2026 program, from the neurourology question and answer session to a session pairing bladder management with wheelchair configuration for intermittent catheterization. NASCIC's knowledgebase article covers how neurogenic bladder develops after spinal cord injury, how it is assessed, and the management options clinicians and patients weigh together.
Read the ArticleThe 2026 ASCIP Educational Conference and Expo runs September 6 to 9 at the Grand America Hotel. Registration is open, and the draft agenda is posted.
Accessibility: ASCIP asks attendees requesting accommodation to contact Amy Cheatham at acheatham@lutinemanagement.com. Accessible guest rooms at the Grand America can be requested during conference registration.
