Mary Jane (MJ) Mulcahey, PhD, OTR/L

Chair

Dr. Mulcahey is a Professor of Occupational Therapy and Director of the Center for Outcomes and Measurement in Jefferson College of Rehabilitation Sciences (JCRS) at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA. She has over 30 years of experience as a practitioner, educator and researcher, and is a certified health coach, competent coach and life care planner.  Her primary area of research is on the development, validation and utilization of new and existing outcome measures of impairment, physical function, activity, and participation for children, youth and adults with spinal cord injury (SCI), and other chronic conditions. She served as Principal Investigator for a seminal multi-center study on the psychometric properties of the International Neurological Classification of Spinal Cord Injury in children, which subsequently lead to evidence-informed guidelines on evaluation of the neurological consequence of SCI in children, and the first study aimed at establishing imaging biomarkers of pediatric SCI. Engaging and working collaboratively with others, Dr. Mulcahey has developed and validated IRT-based child and parent reported outcome measures, conducted psychometric studies to establish lower age guidelines for outcome instruments used in SCI clinical trials, established pediatric recommendations for the NINDS SCI CDE and International SCI basic data sets, and developed and validated estimates to allow linking between pediatric and adult patient reported outcome scores. Dr. Mulcahey is currently studying the feasibility and outcomes of coaching caregivers of children with SCI and developing an IRT-based clinical trial outcomes assessment. 

Dr. Mulcahey has published over 180 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 24 chapters, and served as editor for nine books/special journal issues. She has received research funding from the National Institutes of Health, Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, Rick Hansen Institute and the Shriners Hospitals for Children. Dr. Mulcahey is past-president of the American Spinal Injury Association (2015-2017) and past-vice president of the Pediatric Spine Foundation (2015-2020) current chair of the Board of Governance of the Steel Assembly for Pediatric SCI\D, associate editor for Topics in SCI Rehabilitation,  and editorial board member of Spinal Cord and the Physical Therapy Journal. Dr. Mulcahey is a member of the Academy of Research.