Director appointed to lead UF rehabilitation research center

The University of Florida has appointed Pamela W. Duncan as the first director of the Brooks Center for Rehabilitation Studies.

Duncan, who will begin her new position in January, will lead the center’s efforts to develop and test new rehabilitative interventions, assess the effectiveness of existing treatments and examine the health policy implications of rehabilitation care. She will build links between the center’s research component, located primarily at the University of Florida College of Health Professions and the Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute in Gainesville, and the patient care element carried out by the Jacksonville-based Brooks Health System, Shands Jacksonville hospital and other UF affiliated facilities.

Duncan also will serve as an executive board member of UF’s Institute on Aging, a research health scientist for the Veterans Health System of North Florida/South Georgia and the Malcom Randall Veterans Affairs Medical Center and a professor in the departments of health services administration and physical therapy.

“As one of the most successful rehabilitation outcome researchers in the world, Pam Duncan’s renown ensures the Brooks Center will win immediate recognition as an important rehabilitation research program,” said Robert G. Frank, dean of the College of Health Professions. “Her past record of winning federal research support and building research programs promises the Brooks Center will quickly establish a significant and enduring role among the most prominent research programs.”

Duncan is currently the research director for the University of Kansas Center on Aging and a tenured professor in health policy and management at UK’s School of Medicine. She has particular expertise in evaluating the effectiveness of medical rehabilitation, developing health status measures for people who are permanently disabled and designing clinical trials to evaluate exercise interventions for elderly and stroke survivors.

Duncan is a member of the National Stroke Association’s board of directors, the executive committee of the American Stroke Association and the health policy committee of the American Heart Association. She earned a bachelor’s degree in physical therapy from Columbia University and a doctorate in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Brooks Center for Rehabilitation Studies was founded in 1999 as a collaborative effort between the UF College of Health Professions and the Brooks Health System to evaluate rehabilitation techniques, develop novel clinical therapies for patients and study related health policies.