Elizabeth Sandel, MD
Photo: Susan Freundlich
Board Chair
Expert Guest Speaker
Elizabeth Sandel, MD, is a Clinical Professor in the Department of PM&R at the University of California Davis School of Medicine and Author of Shaken Brain: The Science, Care, and Treatment of Concussion.
Dr. Sandel has decades of experience providing care for people with brain injuries and other neurological disorders. She is board-certified in physical medicine and rehabilitation and brain injury medicine. Dr. Sandel has practiced medicine in healthcare systems on the East and West Coast, including the Jefferson Health System, the University of Pennsylvania Health System, and Kaiser Permanente.
From 1997 to 2013, she was a physician in the California Permanente Medical Group. She served as Chief of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation for the Napa Solano Service Area and as Medical Director of the Kaiser Foundation Rehabilitation Center in Vallejo, California. Since 1998, she has been a volunteer Clinical Professor in the Department of PM&R at the University of California Davis School of Medicine.
From 2013 to 2023, she was a medical director for Paradigm, an organization based in Walnut Creek, California, that provides medical case and care management for catastrophically injured workers.
Dr. Sandel’s research on brain injury and stroke has been supported with funding from Kaiser Permanente, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health. She served on the American Academy of PM&R Board of Governors for eight years and as President from 2009-2010. In 2012, the AAPM&R awarded her the Krusen Lifetime Achievement Award.
Dr. Sandel continues to educate the public about brain injury through publications and her website. Her book, Shaken Brain: The Science, Care, and Treatment of Concussion (Harvard University Press, 2020), is a resource for patients and others who want to understand these injuries to the brain and what interventions can help. Dr. Sandel completed a PM&R residency at Thomas Jefferson University in 1984 and a fellowship in brain injury rehabilitation at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital in 1985.