Measurement Networking Group Election 2020
Three leadership positions will open this month on the Measurement Networking Group Executive Committee, including Early Career Officer, Awards Officer, and Communications Officer. Please review the responsibilities of each role and the following candidates and then watch your inbox for your election ballot.
An election survey ballot was sent to all voting members of the MNG on 5 October from crobinson@ACRM.org. If you believe you are a member in good standing and did not receive an invitation to participate in the election, please contact Cindy Robinson.
FOR EARLY CAREER OFFICER
The candidates are:
Chih-Ying (Cynthia) Li, PhD, OTR/L
Assistant Professor
Department of Occupational Therapy
University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
I am honored to be nominated for the Early Career Officer position of the ACRM Measurement Networking Group (M-NG). I attended my first ACRM Conference in 2013 as a doctoral student and have been a M-NG member ever since. I received my PhD in 2015, then joined the Early Career Networking Group (ECNG) in 2016 as a postdoctoral fellow and became a member of ECNG the same year. My unique experience of being currently involved in both M-NG and ECNG prepares me well to serve as the Early Career Officer of M-NG.
I was elected last year as the M-NG Early Career Officer and am currently working on the M-NG mentoring program with ECNG. I believe M-NG is the platform that can make this collaborative vision across networking groups happen. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve another year to fulfill such vision at M-NG.
If elected, I will continue establishing the mentoring program and serving as liaison between M-NG and ECNG, with the goal to enhance ACRM and M-NG recruitment and retention of early career members and professionals.
My training and experience as a clinician, researcher and educator have equipped me well to serve in this role. I have published 33 peer-reviewed manuscripts, received a NIH K01 Award, a Health Services Research grant from American Occupational Therapy Foundation and a Pepper Center pilot grant. I also collaborate with interdisciplinary researchers locally, nationally and internationally. My leadership, management and interpersonal skills demonstrate valuable qualifications that I can bring to this position.
I believe all benefit when senior, middle-career and junior researchers/clinicians work together and learn from each other to enhance research, practice, education and policy change in rehabilitation research and practice. I am thankful for the chance to contribute my skills and expertise to work on this vision at ACRM.
Ryan J. Walsh, MA, MS, OTR/L
PhD Student, Program in Occupational Therapy
Washington University School of Medicine
I would be honored to serve as the Early Career Officer of the ACRM Measurement Networking Group (M-NG) Executive Committee. I am a PhD student in the Program in Occupational Therapy at Washington University School of Medicine. My research interests are in neurorehabilitation, mobile health, and dissemination & implementation. I am also a licensed and registered occupational therapist who practiced in a skilled nursing facility. The M-NG’s mission to advance measurement and its application to research and practice represents what I would like to contribute to rehabilitation as a young scientist and clinician.
I joined ACRM when I was an occupational therapy student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I learned about the ACRM by volunteering to edit instrument summaries on the Rehabilitation Measures Database at the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in 2017-2018. Engagement with the Rehabilitation Measures Database helped me develop my interests in advancing measurement science for rehabilitation researchers and clinicians. I regularly attend ACRM events to present and learn about measurement science. In addition, I am interested in developing collaborations between the M-NG and Early Career Networking Group (EC-NG). I seek to build ties between these groups by engaging scientists and clinicians in measurement-related discussions.
My training and experience as a clinician and as a researcher have prepared me well to serve as the M-NG Early Career Officer. In addition, I bring experience from my former career as an educator in university, K-12, and community settings in the United States and abroad. I am excited bring these experiences to the ACRM M-NG’s multidisciplinary rehabilitation community. The leadership, management, and interpersonal skills I have developed through my experiences will help me engage stakeholders in the M-NG, EC-NG, and ACRM to advance rehabilitation and measurement science.
FOR COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER
The candidate is the incumbent Communications Officer:
Jennifer Weaver, PhD(C), MA, OTR/L, CBIS (Incumbent)
Research Associate, Advanced Metrics Lab
Associate Program Director, Post-professional Occupational Therapy Doctorate
School of Medicine & Health Sciences
George Washington University
I would be honored to continue serving as the Communications Chair of the ACRM Measurement Networking Group (MNG) Executive Committee. As a researcher and clinician, the MNG mission represents what I love most, applying measurement, to the field of rehabilitation.
I joined ACRM in 2016 as a doctoral student at the recommendation of my advisor and quickly jumped in to assist the Communications Chair with facilitating communication about measurement via the Pre to Post newsletter. Now, as the current Communications Chair the position has expanded to include overseeing the Knowledge Translation committee. As an inaugural group in 2019, we hit the ground running and will be presenting an instructional course and symposia for the 2020 annual conference. I also regularly attend the Health Services Dissemination & Implementation Science task force meetings to examine where there is overlap and connect members with one another. My ability to create partnerships within MNG and with other networking groups has led to presentations at the annual conference every year since becoming an ACRM member.
My training and experience as both an occupational therapist and a researcher in the Advanced Metrics Lab have prepared me to serve in the role of Communications Officer for the MNG. I’m currently a PhD candidate in the Translational Health Science program, Research Associate in the Advanced Metrics Lab, and Associate Program Director for the Post-Professional Occupational Therapy Doctorate Program at The George Washington University. I’ve published peer-reviewed manuscripts and presented on topics such as, knowledge translation, implementation science, measurement, and creating recovery trajectories from assessment data to better understand what influences functional gains. In my roles, I have gained strong leadership, organizational, and interpersonal skills that will help me engage across disciplines to work towards the common goal of sharing measurement-related concepts and research with the rehabilitation field.
Measurement is at the crux of understanding how our interventions are working for our clients and we must not only be concerned with measurement characteristics but measuring what matters. MNG represents the current and future leaders of these endeavors, and I am eager to continue as the Communications Officer.
FOR AWARDS OFFICER
The candidates are:
Allen W. Heinemann, PhD, ABPP (RP), FACRM (Incumbent)
Professor, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Co-Editor-in-Chief, ACRM Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Allen W. Heinemann is a Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and Director of the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab (formerly the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago). He completed a doctoral degree in psychology at the University of Kansas, is a diplomate in Rehabilitation Psychology, and a fellow of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and the American Psychological Association. He became an ACRM member in 1987 and is a past-president and fellow of the American Congress of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and the Rehabilitation Psychology division of the American Psychological Association. He serves as co-Editor-in-Chief for the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. He is the author of more than 300 articles and is the project director of a Rehabilitation Research and Training Center and three Advanced Rehabilitation Research Training Awards from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research; PI on two Department of Defense awards, and co-PI on an R01 from NIDCD and AHRQ. He received the Distinguished Career Award from the Rehabilitation Psychology division of APA. As the founding chair of the Measurement Networking Group, he relishes the opportunity to remain engaged in MNG by supporting excellence in research by serving as the Awards Officer, and helping fulfill the mission and vision of MNG.
Chun-Kai Huang, PhD, MS
Assistant Professor, Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science
University of Kansas Medical Center
I joined ACRM in 2018 as a postdoctoral fellow, and our poster was fortunate to be awarded by the Measurement Networking Group (MNG, under the “Measurement in Action” category). As the first-time goer, MNG’s diverse task forces really drew my attention as they connect researchers and clinicians with multidisciplinary backgrounds to work on specific goals together. One of MNG’s missions (i.e., to synthesize evidence of improved measurement to enhance patient care and healthcare policy) makes me believe that joining MNG will make huge impacts not only on my early career development but also on improving evidence-based practice.
My training and teaching experience in biomechanics, human movement, and rehabilitation science, has well prepared me to serve in the MNG Awards Officer role. My doctoral and postdoctoral work focused on the measurement of lower extremity biomechanics in neurodegenerative populations. As a current Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science at University of Kansas Medical Center, I lecture Research in Evidence-Based Physical Therapy Practice which connects current evidence, clinical practice, and patients/participants. I believe these experiences will help engage researchers and clinicians across disciplines to work toward common goals aligned with MNG’s mission.
It will be my great honor and pleasure to serve as the MNG Awards Officer of ACRM. I look forward to working with my teammates 1) to ensure that the MNG sponsored program content is coordinated in ACRM; 2) to identify the selection of poster awards (i.e., Early Career, Measurement in Action, and Advancing the Science of Measurement) in ACRM annual meeting. I also commit my two consecutive years of service and attendance of ACRM to collaborate with the Chair-Elect to assure that ACRM program content sufficiently addresses MNG interests.
