A Complete Continuum of Care for Medical-Surgical Services and Physical Rehabilitation

A Place to Discover What is Possible.

Casa Colina is a non-profit, freestanding, community-governed organization. With incredible support from our community, we have been privileged to bring the benefits of rehabilitation to tens of thousands of people since our first patient in 1938. In the decades that followed, we continued to expand our care to include a state-of-the-art hospital that offers acute rehabilitation and medical-surgical care, as well as a broad range of outpatient services that includes specialized physician clinics, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, neuropsychology, diagnostic imaging, children's services and even an outdoor recreation program for people with disabilities. In the pages that follow, you'll discover more about our leadership, our nearly 80-year legacy and the numerous ways we help people achieve optimum health, gain independence and return to the highest level of function possible.

A Center of Rehabilitation Excellence in Southern California

Above all else, we want to provide every individual the maximum opportunity for rehabilitation after an unexpected injury or illness, or debilitating disease. This is at the very core of everything we do here. Casa Colina is a unique Center of Excellence that provides a culture of collaboration where medical leaders and experienced physical rehabilitation experts work together to help individuals steadily progress from one level of achievement to the next. It's a complete continuum of care designed for patients at any stage of rehabilitation - from acute rehabilitation hospital care to post-acute residential and outpatient services that are conveniently accessible throughout a state-of-the-art 20-acre Pomona campus and satellite locations.

Advocacy, Aid and Awareness

Where do patients turn for help when they need financial support to continue their care at Casa Colina? Where does a parent turn for additional support for his or her child’s disability? The Casa Colina Foundation acts as a safety net for people who may greatly benefit from Casa Colina’s programs and services, but lack the ability to pay for them.

Medical Research at Casa Colina

Exploring New Ways to Enhance Care

The discoveries we make at Casa Colina are destined to not only help our patients, but others throughout the world. Each year, the Casa Colina Research Institute conducts clinical research studies to improve the clinical care of people with disabilities, and discover new findings about disabilities.

Our Researchers

Casa Colina's research team conducts basic, translational, and clinical research, striving to rapidly transform scientific advances into improved patient care and outcomes.

Casa Colina Research Institute Team

Emily Rosario, PhD – Director, Research Institute

Dr. Emily Rosario is a neuroscientist and current Director of the Research Institute at Casa Colina Hospital and Centers for Healthcare. She has more than 15 years of research experience in rehabilitation medicine, age-related disease and dysfunction, neurologic disorders, and endocrine dysfunction at both the basic science and clinical level. She has nearly 40 peer-reviewed publications in the areas of neuroscience, neurologic disorders, and rehabilitation including several publications in high-impact journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Journal of Neuroscience, Neurology, and Frontiers in Neurendocrinology. Dr. Rosario has received several awards and grants funding her research from the Alzheimer’s Association, the UniHealth Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), specifically, the Eye Institute, National Institute of Aging, and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. She has been invited to present her work both nationally and internationally at over 50 conferences, including the International Conference for Alzheimer’s Disease, World Congress on Traumatic Brain Injury, and Society for Neuroscience.

Caroline Schnakers, PhD – Assistant Director, Research Institute

Since the beginning of her career, Dr. Schnakers focused her research on severely brain-injured patients recovering from coma and, more particularly, on the detection of conscious cognitive activity using behavioral and electrophysiological techniques. She has shown the difficulty to detect signs of consciousness (40% of error rate) and the difference of sensitivity between existing coma scales to detect these signs. In parallel, she has developed electrophysiological paradigms for detecting conscious cognitive activity without the intervention of motor and verbal functions (using mental tasks) in severely brain-injured patients who are unable to actively interact with their surroundings. Finally, she has created and validated the first scale allowing pain assessment in patients with disorders of consciousness. In 2010, she received the Young Investigator Award from the International Brain Injury Association in recognition of her work. Dr. Schnakers has published more than 70 articles (H-index: 38), and she is the editor of Coma and Disorders of Consciousness (Springer-Verlag, Paris, 2011; Springer-Verlag, London, 2012).

Amy Zhong Sheng Zheng, PhD – Research Scientist

Stephanie Chang, BSN, RN, CCM – Patient Navigator

Ashley Tolentino, RN – Patient Navigator

Niko Fullmer, BS – Research Coordinator

Henry Millan, BS – Research Associate

James Divine, BS – Research Associate

Collaborators

University of California

California Institute of Technology

University of La Verne

Princeton University

Western University of Health Sciences