Josh Hagan of the WVU
Rockefeller Neuroscience
Institute and Chad
Snodgrass of the WVU
athletic training staff
demonstrate cryogenic
therapy, one of the four
modalities to augment
human performance.
Photo by WVU Medicine.
“It’s not just about athletes and
military. It’s also about switching from
reactionary health care systems to a
health and wellness perspective.”
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WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE
“We’ve seen a reduction of between 85-100 percent in those
conditions,” he says. “It not only saves the Department of De-
fense a lot of money in training, but it keeps the pipeline open
for those trainees as well.”
Benefits in the Medical Field
One of the major opportunities at the WVU Rockefeller
Neuroscience Institute is the ability to use the knowledge the
staff gains from working with military and athletic popula-
tions to help the patient population. Over the last year, Galster
and his team have been able to identify addiction and chron-
ic pain—two of the top priority populations they wanted to
work with. With the addiction population, the Comprehen-
sive Opioid Addiction Treatment Program, known as COAT,
has allowed the team to work with different groups of that
population, including people who have been clean and sober
for more than 90 days.
“When they meet with our therapist every other week, our
therapist will say, ‘Hey, how’s it going? How have the last two
weeks been?’ Typically, the answer is, ‘Fine’ or some kind of
vanilla response,” says Galster. “What we are doing now is
providing wearable devices so I can track their heart rate,
their activity and their sleep and look at their stress response.
I’m able to then ask them about what was going on when this
happened.”
Galster is also performing cognitive testing with this pop-
ulation via cell phones. If a patient doesn’t have a cell phone,
he provides them one.