Spring 2015 Community News
(Left to right) Dr. Anne Fenety (Director and Assistant Professor, School of Physiotherapy), the honourabe Mr. Leo Glavine (Minister of Health and Wellness), Dr. Cheryl Kozey (Professor and Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Heath Professions), Dr. William Webster (Dean, Faculty of Health Professions), Dr. Martha Crago (Vice President of Research) and Dr. Derek Rutherford (Assistant Professor, School of Physiotherapy). Photo credits: Danny Abriel
By: Jocelyn Adams, Communications & Special Projects Assistant
It’s been an exciting spring for the School of Physiotherapy! In mid-March, faculty members Drs. Anne Fenety, Derek Rutherford and Cheryl Kozey had the opportunity to unveil a new research suite at the Musculoskeletal Health Research Lab Open House on Thursday, March 12, 2015.
Guest speakers included Dr. Martha Crago, Dalhousie’s Vice President of Research and the honourable Mr. Leo Glavine, Minister of Health and Wellness and Seniors. Dr. Crago cut the official ribbon to open the lab, while Mr. Glavine participated in a treadmill demonstration from Dr. Derek Rutherford and his Research Assistant, Mr. Matthew Baker.
Photo credit: Danny Abriel (Dalhousie)
Over 40 guests celebrated the opening, which included a post-event equipment display from the suite’s research team.
The suite is equipped to track muscle usage patterns, assess muscle strength and balance, and perform motion analysis of different functional tasks such as walking. The recent equipment provides researchers with the new capacity to understand how lower limb injuries and osteoarthritis disease impact function and to develop innovative management approaches to reduce the burden of these impairments.
Dalhousie University has a long-standing world-class reputation for functional movement analysis research, focused on patients with a range of muscle, bone and joint (musculoskeletal) disorders. This reputation was established through researchers in Physiotherapy, Health & Human Performance, the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Engineering (BME). Their work has expanded beyond the Forrest Building in research spaces in the Capital District Health Authority (CDHA), the School of Biomedical Engineering’s Dynamics of Human Motion (DOHM) Lab, and Dalplex in the School of Health and Human Performance.
The research suite’s renovations were made possible through a successful application to the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) John R Evans Leaders Fund which included both provincial and federal government support as well as contributions from multiple levels in Dalhousie University, in-kind donations, and physiotherapy alumni funds.