APTA Nebraska Podcast
The APTA Nebraska Podcast dives into the stories, challenges, and innovations shaping physical therapy in our state. We’re here to advance, promote, and protect the practice of physical therapy, build our community, and optimize the health and quality of life for all Nebraskans.
APTA Nebraska Podcast
E12 - Research Opportunities: Inside the Nebraska Foundation for Physical Therapy
The Nebraska Foundation for Physical Therapy promotes research and advancement of the physical therapy profession throughout the state through strategic funding and support programs. Rashelle Hoffman, Foundation President and Creighton University assistant professor, explains how the Foundation's mission directly impacts Nebraska's PT community.
• Foundation structured around four committees: fundraising, finance, awards, and research
• Scientific Dissemination Award provides $1,500 for presenting research at conferences (rolling applications)
• George Blanton Research Grant offers up to $10,000 for two-year research projects (deadline: October 1st)
• Current Blanton grant project explores implementing lifestyle medicine assessments in outpatient PT
• PT students Tanner Ruda and Janae Pope share their experiences presenting research at CSM with Foundation support
• Fundraising initiatives include an auction at April 10-11 state meeting at UNMC's Truhlson Events Center
• Wayne Purdue Fellowship recognizes cumulative donations starting at $500 level
• New research funding opportunities being developed for the coming year
Visit the APTA Nebraska website for application materials and contact information. The Foundation welcomes new fundraising ideas and encourages applications for the October 1st Blanton Grant deadline.
Episode Links:
Welcome to the APTA Nebraska podcast, where we dive into the stories, challenges and innovations shaping physical therapy in our state. We're here to advance, promote and protect the practice of physical therapy, optimizing the health and quality of life for all Nebraskans. Join us as we connect with experts, share insights and build communities throughout our profession. Connect with experts, share insights and build communities throughout our profession. Welcome back to the APTA Nebraska podcast. I'm Brad Dexter and today we're going to be talking about the Nebraska Foundation for Physical Therapy, so my guest is Rochelle Hoffman. Rochelle, how are you?
Speaker 2:Doing well.
Speaker 1:Good. Rochelle, you're becoming a frequent flyer on the podcast now. This is take number two for you, but you're wearing a different hat today and in a different role as the president for the Nebraska Foundation for Physical Therapy. So for our listeners, can you share a little bit about yourself and, beyond what you do with the NFPT, maybe what else you do?
Speaker 2:Sure, so I'm an assistant professor at Creighton University in the Department of Physical Therapy and I am faculty within our geriatric residency program as well as I teach neuroscience within our entry-level doctorate program.
Speaker 2:But really a bulk of my time is spent doing research and that really relates to my role as the president of the foundation. So I do a lot of research in the area of geriatrics, kind of on a spectrum of doing a lot of high-intensity interval training how can we maximize mobility with older adults, and then also have research in the space of more lower-level activity. How do we get people started that are not being active at all? And a lot of that research is more so rooted in behavior change techniques and how do we just move the needle a little bit, and most of that is focused on walking programs that can be done in the community. So get to spend a lot of time with students that are involved with that, as that kind of relates to the other podcast we did with a student that had a award, but then also relates to the foundation, as we try to support students too with their dissemination of research.
Speaker 1:I love it. So you basically just like shoved a lot of things that you do in like a minute and a half elevator speech, right. So there, you have a lot going on. You're doing some really great work. I'm wondering now can you tell us a little bit about what the Nebraska Foundation for Physical Therapy is, maybe who's involved, how it functions?
Speaker 2:and I'll ask you a few more questions as we go along who's involved, how it functions, and I'll ask you a few more questions as we go along.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the foundation, the mission of it, is to really foster and promote the advancement of the physical therapy profession, and the title of it is Nebraska, so we're very locally focused in Nebraska. How can we make an impact here? And so our focus is on promoting research to enhance both physical therapists but also physical therapy assistants, who deliver services spanning prevention, diagnosis, as well as treatment of movement dysfunction and what our group involves. So we have a board, and we have a board of eight members, and we have folks that are more on the academic side, like myself, but then also clinicians that are, you know, full-time practicing in the clinic every day, and so we usually meet at least a couple times a year. As, of late, we've had a lot of great ideas. We've been meeting quite a bit more often than that Kind of, I would say, collaborating and coming up with new ideas that I'm excited to share with you today, as we are starting some fun stuff.
Speaker 1:I love it. So I heard in the mission statement there that a part of what the foundation is trying to do is advancing PT practice within our state, promoting research. Can you talk about then how that actually happens, like what are kind of the arms of the foundation to make those things go?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the foundation is made up of four subcommittees, and so we have fundraising. We can't really do anything or support anyone if we don't have funds coming in, so fundraising is a huge part of the foundation and how we can support our physical therapists or physical therapy assistants that are applying for funds. We have our finance committee that is in charge of all the dollars, making sure that we have everything in order. Our awards committee. This is focused on acknowledging our donors that are donating funds to us. And then, lastly, our research subcommittee, and these are the folks that are then reviewing applications for our various research awards and determining which ones to award those funds to.
Speaker 1:Excellent, so let's maybe go through each one of those areas. Then Rochelle so maybe let's talk about the research aspect first here. This is in your wheelhouse, so the intent is to be able to give awards to people, and research committee is reviewing some of the applications that come in. What, what are the potential awards that could go out that you would be reviewing those applications for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say our most popular one is the scientific dissemination award. This is an award that often is awarded to a student that may be presenting some research that they have done either with a faculty member or maybe with a clinician out in the community. It's not exclusive to just students, though. Faculty or clinicians that are presenting their findings at a conference can also apply for those awards, can also apply for those awards, but this is a $1,500 award that can help support, you know, going to CSM or some other conference that may be.
Speaker 2:you know right up your alley with your specialty area. Excellent, and do you want me to keep going with some of the other ones.
Speaker 1:Yeah, keep going.
Speaker 2:So that's the most popular one. The Scientific Dissemination Award. Some of our other award options that we have are going to be our George Blanton Research Grant, and I really want to spend some time talking about this one, because we do have applications due October 1st, and maybe before I do that, I'll clarify for the Scientific Dissemination Award, that's on a rolling basis, so there's no deadline associated with that one, you know on an annual basis, just apply, as you are going to be going to conferences and we'll review your application. But going back to the George Blanton Research Grant, this is a grant that you can apply for one time during the year, so deadline is October 1st. You can be awarded up to $10,000 for a project that can span up to two years, and really it's just a project, then, that is focused on advancing the physical therapy profession. That goes along with the mission statement of the foundation and with this award too, there's the expectation that you'll hopefully present the findings at the Nebraska State meeting, and I'll go into the. I actually have one of these currently, so I could give you an idea of what a project could look like for the Blanton, and I'm hopeful that we'll be presenting this either at this state meeting in April or the following.
Speaker 2:But we're looking at a lifestyle medicine battery of tests in outpatient physical therapy and can we expand some of our practices in outpatient physical therapy.
Speaker 2:Physical therapists have a lot of the skills to be able to assess some of these lifestyle medicine pillars and we're seeing if this short battery that takes less than 10 minutes when a patient is originally coming in for their eval is that something that's achievable?
Speaker 2:And then, where we have outcomes related to what do patients think about being asked questions, you know, about their sleep health, their nutrition, their stress, substance use, social support and physical activity, and if they think that that makes sense to be asked that in an outpatient PT setting. And then we have other outcomes with the project that are more on the physical therapist side, where we ask did you feel prepared to take this information and implement it in your plan of care? Maybe some therapists feel more prepared than others to answer questions about sleep health, for example, versus nutrition, and how can we really get the conversation started? Because there are ways that either we can make an impact in our plan of care or, when appropriate, have a referral out to providers that have more of a specialization in those areas. So we're still analyzing the data. No results to share yet today, but excited to share some of those in the near future.
Speaker 1:I love that. That's a really great example of how the Blanton grant is being used currently. I do want to take a moment because we have a couple guests with us student guests who have had, or who have received the Scientific Dissemination Award here in the past year, and so I want to just introduce the audience to Tanner Arruda and Janae Pope. Guys, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you, thanks for having us on. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:So again. Tanner Arruda, Janae Pope, you guys are each well, you're PT3 students. Now You're in your third year of PT school at UNMC. At UNMC, and, as I mentioned, you guys both were awarded the Scientific Dissemination Awards through the Nebraska Foundation for Physical Therapy. Can you tell our audience a little bit about, I guess, how you found out about those and how you use them?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I can go ahead and start. So after the first year of physical therapy school at UNMC we have the opportunity to go through a special topics elective course during the summer where you can do research with a faculty member, get one-on-one mentorship and kind of help out as little or as much as you want during that time on a project that you want to start up or one that they already have going. And so I hopped on with Dr Mike Rosenthal and we started a research project over the effects of walking with blood flow restriction and the spatio-temporal gait parameter changes. And once we finished that research, got all the data collection, we decided to go to CSM and present an abstract and poster. And that's where he told me about the dissemination fund and how to apply for it so that I could help get funds for the trip.
Speaker 1:Excellent. How about you, Janae?
Speaker 4:Similar story here. I actually did not go through the elective Dr Betsy Becker. She is the director of our PT program here at UNMC and she was looking for a student worker to help her out with a project that was already in existence for the position and ended up getting it. Our project was about Medicaid in Nebraska and we were basically looking through Medicaid claims data to see basically overarching themes of what people were coming in for, what they were using physical therapy for and how specifically how long, they were in physical therapy, and our goal was to come up with an optimal number of PT visits that Medicaid should approve before prior authorization is required. So basically my job was to conduct a literature review to see if that answer was already out in the world, which it's not. It's different, but it's not necessarily defined across the literature. And then we went and we presented our findings at CSM. Dr Becker also informed me about this award and I decided to apply because you know any help is great when you're traveling to another state.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I assume ultimately the award was used for travel, csm registration, those types of things. Good, and so can you guys maybe just share, briefly, looking back, what are some of the biggest takeaways or lessons that you guys gained from the experience as a whole?
Speaker 4:I think one of the biggest ones that I learned from the experience was people tell you how big of a deal CSM is, but until you're actually there and you see how huge of an event it is, you don't really understand. So that was a big eye opener for me and I definitely plan on going back to CSM in the future because I learned so much, was able to attend a bunch of educational lectures and learned a lot from that. But then as far as the research process itself, just what goes into applying for CSM, applying for funding to go to CSM, and just in research in general, what goes on behind the scenes before you're even ready to disseminate on a topic?
Speaker 3:I can't echo that enough. The biggest takeaway for me is go to CSM. Go to CSM, go to CSM. It is one of the most amazing experiences I've been a part of, not only at UNMC but throughout my entire educational experience as a student. There's so many fantastic opportunities there. You can network with different people, you can go to different events. You can just learn so so much during your time there. You get free resources.
Speaker 3:There's a bunch of stands that you can go to to, you know, get free items and just a ton of stuff to do there and, like Janae said, it's a huge event. I think that there was over probably 10,000 clinicians there, if I had to guess. So amazing experience. And then, on the research side of things, the biggest takeaway there is just how much time and effort actually goes into a research project and how long it takes for that research to develop. You often just you know you get on PubMed or whatever resource you use or APTA PubMed or whatever resource you use or APTA. You find these resources and you know you can read them quickly, but you don't really realize that that was a three to five to 10 year process sometimes. So that was a big takeaway and it's. Yeah, that was very, very valuable experience getting to be involved in that process as well.
Speaker 1:As you were actually presenting your posters, disseminating that research. Do you have like a favorite conversation that you had with someone? What did you enjoy about some of those small conversations you had as people walked through the posters?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I really enjoyed, honestly, every conversation I had, and I'm not just saying that to say I met so many fantastic people. I got asked some really fantastic questions and it was just we had some really engaging conversations with everybody that walked by, because there's, when you go there, there's, I mean, hundreds of posters and hundreds of people presenting, so when people walk by and ask, they truly do care about your subject or want to learn more. But one of my favorite conversations I've had, I got to meet a clinician who's been practicing for 20, 30 years out of San Diego and he him and I talked about BFR training and his different experiences that he's had and we really just kind of bounced off of each other and now I have a great connection that I can kind of connect with, hopefully in future practice.
Speaker 4:Same. I had a lot of really great conversations with people. It was just exciting to be able to present what I'd been working on to Medicaid, and one of the most memorable conversations for me was there's a physical therapist that came up from a different state whose Medicaid is not as it doesn't cover nearly as much as Nebraska Medicaid does, and when he found out that Nebraska Medicaid was actually it was UHC that approached us and asked us to look into this. He was baffled. He's like we can't get Medicaid to pay for anything in our state. So the fact that they let you do this first of all and are receptive to what you found he was just.
Speaker 4:He was blown away and got a lot of thank yous from a lot of people saying thank you for looking into this, thank you for advocating for our patients. We actually ended up getting a ribbon. It wasn't like a blue ribbon we won anything, but lots of people got this ribbon but it was actually from the APTA Academy of Leadership and Innovation and it was a ribbon that we got to hang on our poster for recognition of work and promotion of social responsibility. So that was kind of a. That was a neat little thing to say that you know we got recognized for our work in advocating for our patients, so yeah, no, that's great.
Speaker 1:It sounds like it was a phenomenal experience all around and really appreciate you guys taking the time to just share how you're able to use the dissemination award from the Nebraska Foundation for Physical Therapy. So thanks again for joining us, thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks for having us on. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1:So, rochelle, let's maybe turn our attention now just back to those branches of the foundation. So I think we covered the awards that we typically give. Can you talk a little bit about the fundraising aspect, because none of this goes without the fundraising right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the fundraising is where we spend a lot of our time as a board and specifically the subcommittee members of that fundraising committee really identifying what are some ways that we can engage our membership or folks that are in the community to provide funds for the foundation so we can continue to support students and folks that are wanting to do research that can impact the profession.
Speaker 2:So we are looking at every year, I will say, looks a little different. Currently our brainstormed ideas are to do a silent auction coming up at the state meeting and for those of you that haven't marked your calendars yet, for the state meeting, that's going to be April 10th and 11th in Omaha, nebraska, at UNMC's Trulson Events Center. So make sure that you try to open up that weekend if you can to come join for some excellent programming and hopefully a fun silent auction to raise some funds for our foundation. And in the past also we've done some things like fun runs, like we did a turkey trot last year where you could virtually run a 5k to help raise funds. There's been other ways of just, you know, individually contacting people that have donated in the past to see if they're donating or want to donate again, and other individual approaches that we've gone about too, so, as I said, every year is a little bit different. If anyone has any fun fundraising ideas, though, we would love to hear your ideas if you want to reach out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. One of the fun things I guess that I've been learning about is the Wayne Purdue Fellowship. So I know it's a way of recognizing donors that have given over time to the foundation. My first question was who is Wayne Purdue? I don't know who that is, so it's kind of nice because the foundation website has a link to learn a little bit more about Wayne. It has a link to learn a little bit more about Wayne, his life, his contributions to physical therapy.
Speaker 1:But he was a physical therapist in some of the early days of physical therapy who was highly engaged with our state organization but also the national organization. So he was representing physical therapy at both of those levels and he was a great supporter of some of the physical therapy programs in the area, worked at the Methodist Hospital in their rehabilitation programs there and provided amazing learning opportunities for students. So it's really I thought it was kind of a fun read to learn a little bit of his history and I think the Wayne Purdue Fellowship is a great way to kind of honor that legacy. But I wonder if you can't help our listeners understand just a little bit more of you know what are those? What does that recognition look like? How do we go about? You know, I guess, making people aware of those awards. Yeah, let's start there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so to put a dollar amount with that fellowship. So the Wayne Purdue Fellowship is a recognition for a donor that has given $500 to the foundation and some of our other tiers. So that's the tier that someone be recognized for first. You know, as they proceed to donate higher amounts, the next tier that we have is the bronze award at $1,500, the silver award at $2,500, followed by the gold award at $5,000. And lastly, our top recognition is the corporate, or what we also call the friend of the foundation, which is a recognition for donating $10,000 to the foundation. And we let people know where they're at on their donations, especially if they're close to one of those tiers. If they have an interest in donating a little bit more to get to that next tier, they get recognition, a letter from us and hopefully they're able to attend the annual state meeting where then we formally recognize them during the business meeting and give them a pin for associated with the level that they're being recognized for. So there are some in-person formal recognition opportunities as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and to be clear, when you say each of those levels, it's not a one-time gift at that level, it's kind of an accumulation of donations over time, correct?
Speaker 2:Correct Yep, we keep a nice spreadsheet and keep those cumulative totals going and, yes, it's accumulation over the time. So you don't need to give a $10,000 gift in one check to be able to be a friend of the foundation.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. So I guess maybe I'll just ask you know we've gone through some of the different arms of the foundation. The work that we're doing Obviously can't make these things go without generous donors as well, but what are any new things that might be in the works with the foundation? Do you have anything to comment on there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say keep your ear to the ground for some new award opportunities for research funding and the next year. We've had some exciting conversations in our board meetings about possibly offering two new awards. I won't disclose those yet as we're still working out the details and the naming of those, but we do have some additional opportunities that likely will be coming in the following year.
Speaker 1:Excellent, rochelle. Thank you, I think this is really helpful. I'll be honest, I haven't always known throughout my career what the Nebraska Foundation for Physical Therapy does. That's on me, I hadn't done the research before, but I hope this is a nice way to help others understand what we're doing. This is maybe to be clear the foundation has interaction with our state organization, apta Nebraska, and in fact you can find information about the foundation on APTA Nebraska's webpage. But they're also kind of two separate entities, is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, they are two separate entities, but we are joined with our message and we're both present at the state meeting where we have boosts and share communication that way and I did want to acknowledge Brad, you as well as the treasurer of the foundation, where you also serve at the state level, but then also on the foundation too. So we have connections and unique individuals that are serving in leadership roles on both sides. So thank you again for your time and volunteering that time on both ends there.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, I was not fishing for that at all. But thank you. So maybe just to recap, we have the Blanton Award. That's a $10,000 award. The deadline for your application is October 1st, correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, and all the application materials can be found on the website, and feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions. There's an email on there to ask those questions.
Speaker 1:So happy to help anyone along, so that they can meet that deadline, so you can apply at any point throughout the year. You should be hearing more information on fundraising from us. Again, keep your ear to the ground. We'll probably find a way in our update with our president to even highlight some of those things in future podcasts to make our membership aware of it. And, beyond that, I'll make sure that I have links to the Nebraska Foundation in the show notes for the podcast, with contact information and anything else that we talked about in this show today. So, rochelle, thank you for your time, thank you for the work that you're doing with the foundation, and we'll look forward to hearing the results, uh, from the Blanton grant that you're doing with lifestyle medicine too. That'll be exciting.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thanks for having me on the podcast today.
Speaker 1:Yep, Uh, listeners, uh, thank you for tuning in and we'll look forward to doing this again in the future. Thanks for tuning into the APTA Nebraska podcast. Stay connected with us for more conversations that elevate our profession and improve the lives of Nebraskans. Don't forget to subscribe, share and join the discussion, because together we're driving the future of physical therapy forward.
