The American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM) Annual Conference: Progress in Rehabilitation Research, provides evidence-based educational content for the whole rehab team, individuals with disabilities and caregivers.
Professor Dr. Andrea Behrman, PhD, PT, FAPTA will be presenting an ACRM’s Pre-conference Instructional Course on Sunday November 3rd, 2019. Her course focuses on Optimizing Pediatric NeuroRecovery with Benefits of Early Intervention and Activity-based Therapy.
Well-established evidence demonstrates that whole-body activity is essential for the development and repair of the CNS, yet traditional rehabilitation is insufficient to drive neural change. Activity-Based Therapy (ABT) offers high-intensity activation of the nervous system for recovery in early intervention and chronic care. In this course, past clinical assumptions will be compared to recent scientific evidence guiding development of ABT. We will describe various activity-base interventions with case study illustrations and supporting data. Special emphasis will be paid to the benefit of mechano-stimulation and emergent trunk control assessment tools with sufficient sensitivity to measure change in the very young patient.
Course Learning Objectives:
- List key scientific evidence and principles as the basis for activity-based therapies and rehabilitation paradigm-shift.
- Understand application of training principles to promote recovery/acquisition of trunk control in children/adolescents and identify a clinical outcome measures specific to trunk control and its application to pediatric SCI.
- Define appropriate patient selection and device prescription for mechano-stimulation.
- Describe intensive hospital and home-based interventions and applications of early intervention with mechano-stimulation.
Join Dr. Behrman and her distinguished colleagues:
- Sunday, November 3, 2019
- 8:30 – 5:30pm • Salon C-7, Lower Level
- Chicago, Illinois
Access to the Course and Conference
About Dr. Behrman:
Andrea L. Behrman is Professor at the University of Louisville, Kosair Charities Endowed Chair in Pediatric Neurorecovery, Department of Neurosurgery, Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center, Louisville, KY. Dr. Behrman is the Director of the Kosair for Kids Center for Pediatric NeuroRecovery providing activity-based therapies to promote recovery from neurologic injury in children and conducting research to inform clinical practice. As a physical therapist, her research focuses on developing therapeutic interventions promoting recovery after SCI in children and adults using principles of activity-dependent plasticity and an understanding of the neurobiology of motor control and walking. She partners with basic scientists as a collaborative team conducting bi-directional translational research from bench to bedside to playground/park bench and back. Her research has been funded by NIH, Foundation for Physical Therapy, Dept of Defense, VA Rehab Research and Development, Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Foundation, Coulter Translational Award, and Kosair Charities. She is a Fellow of the APTA (2009) and recipient of the Academy of Neurologic Physical Therapy Research Award (2006), the Maley Lectureship APTA (2014), and the Anne-Shumway Cook Lectureship (2017). Behrman received a B.S. in Biology from Furman University, an M.S. in Physical Therapy from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Motor Control and Learning from the University of Florida.