Susan L. Vaughn, MEd
Susan L. Vaughn is the founder National Association of State Head Injury Administrators (NASHIA), and was the Association’s first president. Since retirement from state government, she has provided technical assistance and consultative to states with regard to service delivery, including technical assistance through the current Traumatic Brain Injury Technical Assistance and Resource Center (TBI TARC) funded by the Administration for Community Living (ACL). Susan is a member of the INROADS Advisory Board, a project focused on opioid use disorder and people with disabilities awarded to Brandeis University’s Institute for Behavioral Health and Lurie Institute for Disability Policy by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR). In August 2020, she became a member of the Advisory Committee for the Lifespan Respite Technical Assistance and Resource Center (TARC) funded by the ACL.
As an independent consultant, she consults with the Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA) on state policy issues and writes the Association’s weekly Policy Corner. She also collaborates on other projects, such as the juvenile justice project conducted by the Mount Sinai Injury Control Research Center (MS-ICRC), New York City, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that ended January 2020.
Susan contributes to national publications. She is the lead author for the chapter on “Health Policy: United States and International Perspectives” in the textbook Brain Injury Medicine, currently in print (2020). She co-authored the chapter on “Systems of Care” in the second edition of the Textbook on Traumatic Brain Injury, authored by Drs. Jonathan Silver, Thomas McAllister and Stuart Yodofsky, and is the primary author for the same chapter for the third edition (2019), edited by Jonathan M. Silver, M.D., Thomas W. McAllister, M.D., and David B. Arciniegas, M.D. She co-authored two articles on public policy featured in the 1994 and 2001 editions of The Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation; and co-editor of the Guide to State Government Brain Injury Policies, Funding and Services (2003 and 2005) produced by NASHIA. In 2010, she wrote the article, “Evolution of State Service Delivery Systems” for the 30th anniversary edition of the BIAA publication, THE Challenge!.
In 2002, she retired from the State of Missouri after nearly 29 years of experience in the field of disabilities. In 1985, she was hired as the first director of the Missouri Head Injury Advisory Council within the Missouri Office of Administration where she worked for seventeen years. Under her direction, the council advocated for legislation and funding to create a service delivery system, including: the brain and spinal cord injury registry; a statewide and regional coordinated trauma system, Medicaid coverage for post-acute services; designated state agency for TBI services; expanded eligibility for developmental disabilities services to include TBI; state funding for long-term supported employment, community support, and service coordination; and the brain injury trust fund legislation. For five years, she administered state funding for community services until transferred back to the Department of Health and Senior Services. In 1997, she was co-program director of the first of four U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Federal TBI Implementation and Post Demonstration grants to improve access to service systems. At the time of her retirement, she was the chair of the State Injury Control Advisory Committee and was a member of several state committees, including the Secondary Injury Prevention Committee, Missouri Transition Alliance Partnership State Advisory Council, and the Missouri Home of Your Own Advisory Board.
Prior to 1985, she was the Assistant to the Director of the Missouri Department of Mental Health serving as the agency’s lobbyist for the department and the three operational divisions (psychiatric services, alcohol and drug abuse, and developmental disabilities) and, in that capacity, she represented the department on the legislative Joint Interim Committee on Head Injury in 1984. From 1979 to 1984 she served as staff to the Missouri Planning Council on Developmental Disabilities; from 1976-1979 she was the Regional Coordinator to the Region IX Council on Developmental Disabilities to plan and develop services in a nine county region, Sikeston, Missouri, and prior to that, she was a speech therapist at B.W. Sheperd State School for the Severely Handicapped in Kansas City, Missouri.
Susan received a B.S. in Education in 1972 from Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, Missouri, majoring in speech pathology, and a Masters of Arts in Education, majoring in special education, in 1980 from the same institution.
