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November 2, 2022

Change comes from within. Its implementation doesn’t happen overnight and can be even more difficult in an environment as complex as the health care industry. Pamela Toto, however, is leading a new paradigm of change as director and professor of the University of Pittsburgh online post-professional Doctor of Clinical Science (CScD) in Occupational Therapy (OT) program. ...

October 31, 2022

Establishing the Master of Science in Athletic Training program at the University of Pittsburgh came at a time when evolution was necessary to ensure professional prosperity and health care competence. As an allied health care provider, athletic trainers possess a wide variety of skills that are unique and unlike any other health care profession. Athletic trainers provide care under the direction of a supervising physician in accordance with their education, training and state’s rules and regulations. ...

October 31, 2022

The Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SHRS) has received special recognition from the Pennsylvania Counseling Association (PCA). During this year’s PCA Conference, the Counseling program was named the 2022 PCA Outstanding Counselor Education Program. ...

October 24, 2022

The University of Pittsburgh is one of seven institutions awarded funding through the distribution of $5.7 million in research grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. The University’s Schools of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SHRS), Public Health and Engineering, and community partners Women for a Healthy Environment (WHE) and the Allegheny County Area Agency on Aging (AAA), received a grant of $918,709 to reduce environmental hazards in residential settings to allow more people to age safely in their homes.

October 14, 2022

Only one month after graduating with his PhD in Rehabilitation Science, Proessl moved into his new position as director of Sports Science at Pitt Athletics in June 2022. It was a position he seemed destined for ten years after he first began looking into how science could improve his own athletic performance. He is continuing his work with the men’s soccer team, but he is now also a resource for all other sports. He explains, “My task is to centralize data, ensure it’s collected and processed at the ‘gold standard’ and then create digestible reports to inform the decision making of coaches and the support staff.”

October 13, 2022

For students interested in graduate studies in sports science at Pitt, Proessl is in a perfect position to remark on the strengths of the program as well as to make the distinction between the master’s and PhD programs. The Master’s in Sports Science (MSSS) program was just being developed as he worked on his PhD. Proessl watched it grow into the European model he had envisioned for himself as a master’s student years before. Now “It’s a one-of-a-kind program,” he says. “Pitt SHRS is in a very unique position. It’s one of the few schools with a master’s degree in Sports Science. The MS has a one-year internship with a team or lab of interest, which is very special in the U.S., it’s something I never had a chance to get. I had to create my own program. It’s the same model as in Europe. If you want to be a sports scientist, the practical experience can’t be underestimated.” 

October 13, 2022

Drive and passion. The University of Pittsburgh has become a nexus for students who live by these traits to fulfill their academic and professional goals. Felix Proessl, 2022 graduate of the Rehabilitation Science PhD program, is the embodiment of drive and passion and the success they can lead to. They have taken him from the small town of Weiden in southeast Germany where he grew up, to the wide-open ranges of Nebraska and Colorado, and finally to the research and sports haven of Pittsburgh where he is pushing the boundaries of athletic performance as the new Director of Sports Science at Pitt Athletics. 

October 11, 2022

As an assistant professor and researcher of Health Informatics in the Department of Health Information Management at the University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, I am leading our efforts at the Pitt HexAI Research Laboratory. I am passionate about improving health care. ...

October 10, 2022

Kim Peterson, assistant professor in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SHRS) Health Informatics (HI) program, is passionate about where the world of HI will take us. “We have tons of electronic health information. Now, how do we get the data out and analyze it to make sense of it?” After 25 years directing health information management (HIM) at local hospitals and working alongside fellow Pitt HI researchers, Peterson is convinced that “the cure for cancer is in the data. ...

October 3, 2022

Three SHRS faculty assumed new leadership roles effective October 1. Tom Platt, professor and associate dean for Academic Partnerships, is now chair of the school’s Department of Community Health Services and Rehabilitation Science (CHSRS). ...

September 28, 2022

It's officially Hispanic Heritage Month, which takes place from September 15 to October 15 and is recognized as a time to celebrate the history and culture of Latinx and Hispanic communities in the United States. I can't help but reflect on how my Latinx heritage has influenced so much of my life! ...

September 26, 2022

On Friday, September 16, the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SHRS) was finally able to come together to celebrate its 50th anniversary of academic excellence at the University of Pittsburgh and to recognize distinguished SHRS alumni on their career achievements. ...

September 22, 2022

“What’s the game-changing need right now in rehabilitation research?” poses Beth Skidmore, associate dean for Research and professor of Occupational Therapy in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SHRS). The answer to her and many others in the field is clear ...

September 20, 2022

Andrew Sprague, assistant professor in the Department of Physical Therapy, was recently awarded $645,053 by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases for a five-year project titled, “Graft harvest as a model of tendon injury: Trajectory of recovery and clinical outcomes.” Below, he explains the study and its importance to future tendon injury patients. ...

September 19, 2022

On August 24, 2022, the expansive windows of Bridgeside Point filled classrooms with an abundance of light as School of Health and Rehabilitation Science (SHRS) researchers participated in the third annual Rehabilitation Research Retreat. It was as if the bright afternoon sun symbolized a new phase reuniting them together in person for the first time since the inaugural virtual retreat in 2020.

September 15, 2022

This past December, Kelsey Watters crossed the stage as one of the first graduates of the University of Pittsburgh’s online Doctor of Clinical Science in Occupational Therapy (CScD) program --a program that began strategizing her success years ago.

September 2, 2022

One of the few Health Informatics (HI) programs in the United States is at the University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and it is transforming the future of health care. In June—in recognition of its leadership and innovation in the growing field of health data science—the HI program received a one-year $300,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH). ...

September 1, 2022

“My hope is to educate and prepare our students not for the day they graduate, but for the next 50 years of their practice. Thus, we need to teach our students to think beyond our borders and be leaders on a global stage,” expresses Dipu Patel, a board-certified physician assistant who joins the University of Pittsburgh Physician Assistant Studies Department as its first professor and vice chair for Innovation.

August 31, 2022

When I was first applying to colleges, I didn’t know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go. I knew I wanted to work in the medical field and be a physician assistant (PA), but didn’t quite know how I would get there or what undergraduate degree would set me on the right path. 

August 24, 2022

Tails were wagging in the hallways of Bakery Square as special guests from My Pet’s Brace came for the day to teach our Master of Science in Prosthetics and Orthotics (MSPO) students about creating leg braces and prosthetics for animals. In the morning, these University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SHRS) students listened to a lecture from the business’ founder, Jim Alaimo, about the fundamentals of this specialized profession. ...

August 23, 2022

“Anybody who is different is looked at and stared at. That happens around the globe,” observes Sue Whitney when asked how society views children with cerebral palsy (CP).  

As co-director and professor of the Master of Science in Physical Therapy (MSPT) program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SHRS), Whitney has decades of experience teaching students and working with adults and children who have neuromuscular movement disorders. For children, a life of independence and prosperity could easily be disregarded by society. Their ungainly stance and inability to control subtle motor skills, like hand movements, elicit stares and often relegate them to a life of constant caregiving by family and special education classes in school. “It’s really hard for parents,” Whitney continues. “I think it’s especially hard because these kids grow older and become adults, and I think people are nicer to children than they are to adults. We need to train children to be productive members of society so that they can be employed.” 

August 19, 2022

Are you ready to break into the field of occupational therapy and become an occupational therapist or are you a practicing occupational therapist (OT) looking to develop advanced skills in practice, implementation or research?  

In the Department of Occupational Therapy at the University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SHRS), we offer four great programs. Often, prospective students are not sure which program is right for them, or where their skills and goals fit best. This information will help you find the Pitt OT program that aligns most closely with your career path.

August 15, 2022

Kori Morgan completed the APP course last fall and is a nurse practitioner at UPMC Central PA in the Primary Care division. Currently, she is the program manager of the Advanced Practice Providers (APPs). Read more about her time in the program.

August 9, 2022

I studied computer science at universities in China and South Korea, but it wasn’t until I came to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for my post-doc in 2015 that I discovered the next generation of data science was in medicine. It was also around that time that the size of data in medicine increased exponentially in the United States because it became more common for hospitals to use electronic health records. At the Mayo Clinic, I saw that the medical data was so large and underutilized that I decided to do my post-doc in the interdisciplinary field of data science and medicine. That was where I started to apply data science, natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques on the large volumes of data collected at the Mayo Clinic hospital.

August 9, 2022

As an alumna, instructor and now vice chair of Post-Professional Education of Pitt’s PT Department, I am uniquely situated to share the many benefits of the University of Pittsburgh’s Master of Science in Physical Therapy program. I joined the physical therapy profession after becoming inspired by the innovative work in the field of orthopedics and sports medicine that was occurring under the direction Dr. Freddie Fu and James (Jay) Irrgang at the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine. They were leading the way in new surgical and rehabilitation techniques that I wanted to be a part of.