Welcome
Christina Oleson, MD
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Metrohealth welcomes Christina V. Oleson MD to the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and the Spinal Cord Injury Program. Dr. Oleson was raised in Boston, earned her A.B. degree at Harvard and her MD at the University of Massachusetts, Worcester. She developed her interest in spinal cord injury during residency at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and subsequently pursued a fellowship in Spinal Cord Medicine at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago at Northwestern. After fellowship in 2004, she joined the University of Alabama at Birmingham where she became the director of the Spinal Cord Injury Inpatient Program in addition to heading the intrathecal baclofen pump clinic. Her research in Alabama focused on Vitamin D Deficiency and immobilization osteoporosis in spinal cord injury patients, with a focus in addressing health disparities in treating these conditions. Between 2008-2010, she returned to New England and joined the Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire, where she served asthe only board-certified SCI physician outside of the VA in the states of Vermont and New Hampshire. There she ran clinics focusing on comprehensive SCI care, pressure ulcer management, spasticity and intrathecal baclofen pump care, and multiple sclerosis.
For the last 8 years, Dr. Oleson has been at Thomas Jefferson University’s Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center where her research investigated the use of zoledronic acid to prevent sudden bone loss in the paralyzed of limbs of acute spinal cord injury patients.
She also clinically treated many individuals with nontraumatic forms of SCI, including cancer, vascular and rheumatologic conditions, as well as other neurologic conditions such as multiple sclerosis. Dr. Oleson will be continuing her research on immobilization osteoporosis here at Metro. She will be seeing outpatients at the Old Brooklyn Campus and will be seeing inpatients at the Rehab Institute of Ohio.
Dr. Oleson also has local ties to the Cleveland area. She has several aunts, uncles and cousins living here and her grandparents were natives of Cleveland. She is also a former competitive figure skater, and went to the National Collegiate Championships for Harvard. In addition to skating in her spare time, she serves as a technical specialist judge for the US Figure Skating Association and is involved with officiating a number of events here in Cleveland and throughout the state.