An innovative treatment for chronic post-traumatic headaches
Ceren Yarar-Fisher, PhD, has arrived at Ohio State to serve as the vice chair of research for The Ohio State University College of Medicine’s Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and director of clinical research at the Belford Center for Spinal Cord Injury at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. She is a skilled and experienced researcher who started her career as a physical therapist.
Destined for research
“Several themes have emerged in my life that I believe make me well suited for a research career in spinal cord injury (SCI) medicine: a curious mind, a fascination with human physiology, and a family member with an SCI,” Dr. Yarar-Fisher said. “My early experiences as a physical therapist in neuro-rehabilitation provided advanced insight into the secondary health conditions that severely reduce quality of life for those with SCI, which in turn motivated me to pursue the graduate and postdoctoral training needed to research and develop effective interventions.”
Dr. Yarar-Fisher’s three goals
Since she’s joined the team at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, her goals are threefold. First, she plans to expand the research portfolio for the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation by increasing grant funding for research and providing research mentoring for junior faculty.
At the Belford Center for Spinal Cord Injury and the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Ohio State, her second goal involves conducting translational research to understand the pathophysiology of traumatic SCI to develop dietary and rehabilitation strategies to improve neuro-recovery, metabolism, gut microbiome composition, and bowel function. She’s currently developing and testing therapeutic diets and electrical stimulation programs to evaluate new ways to prevent neuronal death and promote recovery and function. She’s received several grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) to fund this research.
“I think about acute and chronic SCI as two different things,” Dr. Yarar-Fisher wrote in a recent article. “And I think we need an optimized, acute care approach to improve SCI care. So, in order to do that, we really need to have multidisciplinary teams and a multidisciplinary approach. That’s why we’re using nutrition as a kind of adjuvant therapy in the acute stage. Nutrition definitely won’t solve the whole problem, but I think a combination of nutrition neuroprotection and neuro-recovery therapies will be needed to improve the whole acute care process.”
Lastly, Dr. Yarar-Fisher is committed to mentoring and training more students in spinal cord injury research. “I strive to ensure that all mentees, including under-represented racial and ethnic minorities, feel supported in their quest for a satisfying and successful career and confident in their skills and contributions. My goal in mentoring is to have trainees leave my laboratory with the training and integrity to become leaders in their chosen fields,” she wrote.
Her first two months on the job
Since she started in October 2022, Dr. Yarar-Fisher has felt welcomed at the Ohio State.
“My colleagues at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center have been very warm and friendly. I think we’ll accomplish great things here,” she says. “I came from another large medical system, and I like having the opportunity to work with both research and medical professionals. It’s a good marriage of systems to have both points of view at my fingertips as I do my work.”
Dr. Yarar-Fisher has two children, ages 6 and 8 years old. Her husband is a software developer and is currently in graduate school at Georgia Tech, studying to become a data scientist.
