Profiles in excellence.

Jennifer S Brach, PT, PhD, GCS, the recipient of a Foundation PODS Scholarship in 1998 and a Foundation NIFTI Fellowship in 2001, was recently selected to be the first nonphysician to receive the prestigious Paul B Besson Career Development Award in Aging Research by the National Institute on Aging and the American Federation for Aging Research. Brach, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Pittsburgh, received the Beeson Award in recognition of her proposal titled "Gait Variability: Epidemiology, Measurement, and Management."

The Beeson Award is a highly competitive award granted to physician-faculty scholars "who are laying clinically relevant groundwork in many areas related to aging, including the biology of aging, age-related disease, and health services and clinical management issues, with the aim of enhancing the health and quality of life of older adults" (The Hartford Foundation Report. June 20, 2005, Volume 1, issue 5).

Brach's research focuses on an important indicator of impaired mobility of aging--the variability of walking. Variability of walking is defined as inconsistency of step length, step width, or walking pace. Her research will extend the current knowledge of the causes and consequences of variability of walking and will involve both the development and testing of measures of walking variability and the development of interventions to improve variability of walking. Brach's ultimate goal is to prevent and treat mobility limitations in older adults by improving walking variability in order to promote physical activity and independence and to improve quality of life.

Brach is an active member of several boards and committees, such as the University of

Pittsburgh Institutional Review Board and the University Senate. Brach is an editorial board member for the Journal of Gerontology Medical Sciences. She also serves as a manuscript reviewer for the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, and Physical Therapy.

Over the past 9 years, Brach has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Chattanooga Research Award from the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), the Geriatric Award of Excellence from the Pennsylvania Physical Therapy Association's Geriatric Special Interest Group, and the New Investigator Award from the American Geriatric Society. Brach is a member of the Delta Omega National Honor Society for Schools of Public Health.

Janet K Freburger, PT, PhD, received a Foundation research grant in 2003. Freburger is Research Associate and Fellow at the Cecil G Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and holds a faculty position in the Division of Physical Therapy. She also serves as a consultant to APTA on research methods and strategies for the analysis of secondary data to answer questions related to the effectiveness of direct access. Freburger currently is a co-investigator on several research projects, including "Limb Loading and Weight Transfer During Stroke Recovery," "The Diabetes Self-Management Toolkit," and "Chronic Back and Neck Pain: Care Seeking and Evidence." In addition, Freburger is conducting preliminary analysis of data and literature to determine the factors associated with musculoskeletal injury in nursing assistants working in nursing homes. Her goal is to explore how these factors relate to quality of care and patient safety.