University of Florida researcher receives American Physical Therapy Association’s top award

Pamela Duncan, Ph.D., director of the University of Florida Brooks Center for Rehabilitation Studies, has been named the American Physical Therapy Association’s (APTA) 2003 Mary McMillan Lecturer, the association’s highest honor.

The annual Mary McMillan Lecture Award is named for a pioneer of physical therapy in the United States who was the founding president of the APTA. Duncan’s lecture is scheduled for June 2003 at the association’s annual conference in Washington, D.C.

Duncan, also a professor of health services administration in UF’s College of Health Professions and director of the Veterans Affairs Outcomes Research Center at the Malcom Randall Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Gainesville, is a former president of APTA’s neurology section. She was co-chair of the Consensus Panel on Establishing Guidelines for Stroke Rehabilitation for the Agency for Health Care Policy Research and Education. Duncan serves on the executive committee of the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association, and participates in study sections for the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research and the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging.

A recipient of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Senior Rehabilitation Research Career Scientist award, Duncan has received more than $13 million in research awards from the NIH and other agencies, as well as from private funding sources. She conducts research on assessment of outcomes in stroke patients, patterns of recovery and randomized clinical trials on rehabilitation intervention, as well as falls and instability in the elderly.