As the American Physical Therapy Association celebrates its centennial, faculty from the physical therapy program demonstrated educational excellence and innovation through providing seven educational sessions and professional presentations at the Education Leadership Conference late October in Atlanta, GA.
Over twenty years ago, in the United States, Universal Newborn Hearing Screenings began, which has led to improved habilitation of infants and young children with hearing differences. These improvements have led to most children with hearing loss entering school with language within two standard deviations of their normal-hearing peers.
Instructional designers Michael Lampe and Lisha Bustos from the instructional design service center at Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences have paired with Dr. Jennifer Stevens-Lapsley and her team in the RESTORE lab to develop innovative approaches to workforce development, knowledge translation, and implementation of evidence-based rehabilitation practices targeting rural rehabilitation providers of patients with complex care needs.
Jennifer Stevens-Lapsley, PT, PhD, was interviewed for Consumer Report and featured in the Washington Post. Jennifer, takes readers through some fall-prevention strategies and why COVID-induced isolation has made such strategies more important than ever.
The VA Patient Safety Center of Inquiry – Suicide Prevention Collaborative (PSCI-SPC) was presented last week with the VHA 2021 National Community Partnerships Challenge Award on August 19th by Dr. Steven Lieberman, Acting Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Health.
Two students, Michelle Rauzi, PT, DPT, ATC and Lauren Hinrichs, PT, DPT, OCS, both Rehabilitation Science PhD students under the mentorship of Dr. Jennifer Stevens-Lapsley received Promotion of Doctoral Studies I (PODS) scholarships from the Foundation of Physical Therapy Research.
Congratulations to former CU Rehabilitation Sciences PhD student, Allison Gustavson who received the prestigious Dorothy Briggs Memorial Scientific Inquiry Award for exemplary work led by a student. The manuscript is published in the Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Journal (PTJ).
Chronic pain was something Army Veteran Magdalen Jean-Baptiste believed she’d experience for the rest of her life. That was until one day when a box arrived at her doorstep packed with an iPad, a Fitbit and more. She was now ready to start a 12-week session with the Medically Complex Telerehabilitation program (MCTelerehab) offered through VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System (ECHCS).
Drs. Andrew C. Smith, PT, DPT, PhD and Andrew Q. Tan, PhD, were awarded an AB (CU Anschutz-Boulder) Nexus Research Collaboration Grant Award. Together they will team up on a project:
“Spinal cord injury (SCI) disrupts sensory and motor pathways, resulting in lifelong mobility impairments and loss of functional independence.” This study will characterize how breathing modest bouts of low oxygen (acute intermittent hypoxia; AIH) may enhance the excitability of spared pathways to the lower limb as well as augment motor adaptation in humans with SCI.”
The prevention of veteran suicides has been an ongoing and high priority for the Veterans Affairs Department. Efforts go far beyond hotlines and other operational measures, and extend into research. Both research and operational support and have a locus at VA’s Rocky Mountain Mental Illness Research Education and Clinical Center in Aurora, Colorado. For an update, Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to the Center’s director, Dr. Lisa Brenner.
Dr. Jennifer Stevens-Lapsley, Professor and Director of the Rehabilitation Science PhD Program, recently provided an educational session at the national LeaRRn conference titled Shaping the Future of Telerehabilitation through Research. Dr. Stevens-Lapsley provided the audience with a detailed overview of the RESTORE labs existing project Multicomponent Telerehabilitation for Medically Complex Older Veterans.
Even though learning to waltz had been a lifelong dream for Sarah Cauley, she cancelled just one day before her first lesson. She was unable to open her hand enough for someone to hold it, and was afraid no one would want to try.
“The words ‘graceful’ and ‘cerebral palsy’ are two words that are not typically used in the same sentence,” explained Sarah, an individual with spastic cerebral palsy.
Watch Sarah dance today and you would describe her as graceful. Not only has Sarah become a competitive ballroom dancer, she is helping CU Anschutz researchers explore how cerebral palsy impacts health and mobility in adults.
AURORA - Jillian August is walking 20-percent faster than she did 10 years ago.
That is a huge accomplishment for a 24-year-old with cerebral palsy.
"Even though cerebral palsy is a pediatric onset condition, it's a life long disability," Dr. James Carollo, Ph.D. said. "We need to be vigilant in being able to understand how cerebral palsy affects you over your life span."
Dr. Carollo has worked with Jillian since she was a little girl. She was born with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy, an injury to a developing brain that effects gross motor skills and movement.
Five games into the 2021 World Wheelchair-B Curling Championship in Lohja, Finland, and Team USA is positioned at the top of the team standings with a perfect 5-0 record.
The Team of Matt Thums (Weston, Wis.), Steve Emt (Hebron, Conn.), David Samsa (Green Bay, Wis.), Pam Wilson (Denver, Colo.), and Bat-Oyun “Oyuna” Uranchimeg (Burnsville, Minn.), arrived in Finland last week to adhere to the health protocols from local and national health authorities. While acclimating to the time change, the Team began their Covid testing and underwent 72 hours of self-isolation before hitting the ice for pre-event practice.
A lot has changed in the 20 years since University of Colorado School of Medicine researchers Meredith Mealer, PhD, RN, and Marc Moss, MD, started studying the effects of stress on critical-care nurses.
“Twenty years ago, people would say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. We don’t see this at our hospital. What’s wrong with where you work?’” says Moss, pulmonologist and head of the Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine. “And now, even prior to the pandemic, the National Academy of Medicine recognized that this is a major issue in health care. It’s been interesting to see the perceptions change over the past 10 to 20 years.”
A primary care toolkit for brain health assessment and dementia diagnosis has gotten a much-needed update as more research points to the potential for better outcomes with earlier diagnoses, says the Gerontological Society of America.
Members of the RESTORE team (Katherine Seidler, Katie Butera, and Lauren Hinrichs) under the lead of Dr. Jennifer Stevens-Lapsley in the Rehabilitation Science Program have developed a project informed by best practice in both education research and implementation science to expand education and training access to rural rehabilitation providers providing care for rural Veterans.
This is one of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses’ (AACN) highest honors. Dr. Mealer was honored for her contributions to high acuity and critical care nursing, along with her sustained, pioneering work and collaboration on the body of research related to PTSD in nurses with particular focus on critical care.