Profiles in excellence.

To promote the development of research careers in physical therapy, the Foundation uses your financial gifts to fund postprofessional doctoral students and provide support for research grants. Here are 2 examples of Foundation recipients who have turned Foundation dollars into productive research that benefits their careers and physical therapy.

Michael Schubert, PT, PhD, a 2000 PODS II recipient, co-authored 4 journal articles published in 2004 that report findings from his Foundation supported dissertation, "Mechanisms of Gaze Stability" in Persons With Vestibular Hypofunction."

Schubert MC, Das V, Tusa RJ, Herdman SJ. Cervico ocular reflex in normal subjects and patients with unilateral vestibular hypofunction. Oral Neurotol. 2004;25:65-07.

   This paper provides evidence of a
   cervico-ocular reflex (COR) in a
   patient with unilateral vestibular
   hypofunction and enhancement of
   the COR after a vestibular rehabilitation
   program incorporating gaze
   stability exercises, a previously unreported
   finding.

Schubert MC, Tusa RJ, Grine LE, Herdman SJ. Optimizing the sensitivity of the head thrust test for identifying vestibular hypofunction. Phys Ther. 2004;84:151-158.

   This article describes a method that
   appears to improve the validity of
   the clinical head thrust test.
   Ensuring that the head is pitched 30
   degrees down and thrust with an
   unpredictable timing and direction
   appears to improve the sensitivity of
   the head thrust test.

Biousse V, Tusa RJ, Russell B, Azran MS, Das V, Schubert MC, Ward M, Newman NJ. The use of contact lenses to treat visually symptomatic congenital nystagmus. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2004;75:314-316.

   This research suggests that much of
   the clinical improvement observed
   in 4 patients with congenital nystagmus
   may result from a better optical
   correction of their refractive error
   with contact lenses than with spectacles,
   rather than from a true damping
   effect of the nystagmus by contact
   lenses.

Hall CD, Schubert MC, Herdman SJ. Prediction of fall risk reduction as measured by Dynamic Gait Index in individuals with unilateral vestibular hypofunction. Otol Neurol. In press.

   This manuscript provides evidence
   that vestibular rehabilitation reduces
   fall risk, and that dynamic visual acuity
   and Dynamic Gait Index scores
   are good predictors of fall risk in
   patients with unilateral vestibular
   hypofunction.

Dr Schubert is a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory of Vestibular Neurophysiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Foundation funding was decisive in my continuing development as an independent investigator. It provided not only the financial means to get started on my thesis, but the time to focus on learning the skills needed to be a competitive researcher and writer. Perhaps most important, the Foundation provided a critical boost to my confidence that a career in research was possible."

Jennifer Brach, PT, PhD, GCS, Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh, was a 1998 PODS I scholarship and 2001 New Investigator Fellowship Training Initiative (NIFTI) recipient. In her NIFTI fellowship project, "The Identification of Factors Related to Physical Activity Behavior in Older Adults," she worked with physical activity data from the Health, Aging, and Body Composition (ABC) Study. Funded by the National Institute on Aging, this longitudinal study was designed to determine how changes in body composition related to the incidence of disability, and created a physical activity summary variable based on the Surgeon General's recommendation for physical activity. The association of this physical activity classification to physical function was highlighted in a manuscript that she recently had published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society:

Brach JS, Simonsick EM, Kritchevsky S, Yaffe K, Newman AB, for the Health, Aging, and Body Composition Study Research Group. Lifestyle activity and exercise: The Association with Physical Function in the Health, Aging, and Body Composition (Health ABC) Study. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2004;52:502-509.

   Dr Brach's findings on lifestyle
   activity and exercise demonstrate
   that participation in an exercise
   program is more beneficial to physical
   function in older people than
   being inactive or just being active
   throughout the day. Also, those who
   were active throughout the day
   fared better than those who were
   inactive. Dr Brach's physical activity
   classification has become widely
   accepted by the Health ABC investigators
   and has been used in several
   Health ABC manuscripts submitted
   by other investigators.

Dr Brach also co-authored 2 more articles that were published this year from her dissertation research funded by the AFIA Section on Geriatrics:

Brach JS, Van Swearingern JM, FitzGerald SJ, Storti KL, Kriska AM. The relationship between physical activity, obesity, and physical function in community-dwelling older women. Preventive Med. 2004;39:74-80.

   Results of this research indicate that
   physical activity appears to be as
   important, if not more important,
   than body weight in predicting
   physical function in community
   dwelling older women.

Brach JS, PitzGerald S, Newman AB, Kelsey S, Kuller L, Van Swearingen JM, Kriska AM. Physical activity and functional status in community-dwelling older women: a fourteen-year prospective study. Arch Int Med. 2003; 163:2565-2571.

   This article reported that women
   who consistently exercised over a
   14-year time period were 1.5 times
   less likely to have difficulty with
   functional activities than women
   who were sedentary. A summary of
   Dr Brach's research findings on
   physical activity and functional status
   appeared in the "Better Fitness"
   column in the February 22, 2004,
   issue of Parade Magazine, the May
   2004 issue of Health magazine, and
   in the September 2004 issue of
   Bottom Line Health.

Dr Brach notes, "The funding I received from the Foundation for Physical Therapy and the Section on Geriatrics has been instrumental to my research career. Thanks to this funding, I have been able to develop a publication record that external funding agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, have cited as being a major strength of my grant applications."