“It really feels like you’re a team all working toward a common goal.
That desire and motivation to meet your patients and colleagues
needs is there and very strong.”
– Dr. Simon Driver
the people who manage the Ginger Murchison
Foundation. They told me about Ginger and her
family and how they were very community-focused. Ginger had a brain injury, and before her
injury she was always happy and active – a big part
of the town she lived in. It’s really important to me
and our team that we recognize her legacy and values within our work and try to make real strides
and progress for others living with a brain injury.
I wouldn’t be here and doing a lot of the work without the Ginger Murchison Foundation’s support,
and I’m so very appreciative of them and what their
funding allows us to do.
What drove your interest in TBI in particular?
I was a typical master’s student who didn’t know
what they wanted to do and my mentor at the time
received a phone call from a local rehab center.
With my background in exercise science, he asked
me to help them put together an activity center for
their TBI patients. I created an eight-week program for these patients. I’d learned about the benefits of being active in my coursework, but the
impact of exercise was still not tangible to me.
Through this project, I saw physical, emotional
and psychosocial changes in these patients, and it
was a light-bulb moment for me. I knew I could
really move the needle here in outcomes for these
patients, and I pursued TBI research from there.
What research projects are you currently
involved in and excited about?
I’m very excited about research we’re doing that
takes a look at the long-term, positive effects of
adopting a healthy lifestyle and improving physical activity and nutrition behaviors of our TBI
patients – across the continuum.
What differentiates Baylor from other health
care organizations?
I’ve not worked in an organization before where
I feel a sense of commitment to patients and colleagues like I do here. It really feels like you’re a
team all working toward a common goal. That
desire and motivation to meet your patients and
colleagues needs is there and very strong.
How would you spend an extra hour in your
day?
With my wife, Erin. We’re lucky we live right
off the Katy Trail and we’re on that all the time …
walking, running and biking. I try to live the
active lifestyle I promote for our patients. In fact,
my colleagues and I all have activity monitors that
we wear. Everyone in my office exercises regularly
but these monitors made us realize we’re not very
good at being active during the workday, so we’ve
added in walking routes that we purposefully take
or we hold “walking meetings.”
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