Stroke affects approximately 800,000 people a year, and approximately 75 percent of victims experience impaired walking even after their rehabilitation. Previous research has shown that spontaneous speech has a significant effect on walking in people after stroke, notes Plummer-D’Amato, and her research aims to “detangle the specific contributions of speech respiration and the cognitive demands of spontaneous speech on gait interference.
As she works her way toward medical school, Bouvé student Alison Coll (Health Sciences '10) has been building a body of knowledge by volunteering in Nicaragua, signing on to a summer in India and participating a research program in South Africa.
Coll, who has considered herself a “premed” since she was 11, remains inspired by the memory of her physician father. With each new international experience, Coll stays focused on her goal of using her Health Sciences degree as a springboard to medical school and a career saving lives in far corners of the world.
Associate Professor of Health Science Carmen Castaneda Sceppa is bringing her expertise to two of Northeastern University’s most important community partnerships, the Stony Brook Initiative and La Alianza Hispania.
In 2006, Sceppa’s research was one of two evidence-based studies used by the American Diabetes Association to adopt new exercise guidelines for people with diabetes. Using those same findings, she had input on revising the excercise guidelines developed by the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine .
Working with Associate Professor Jessica Blom-Hoffman, counseling and applied psychology, and Associate Professor Meredith Harris, chair in the physical therapy department, Sceppa is engaged in Healthy Kids, Healthy Futures, a broad-based community collaboration that includes the Boston Red Sox, Boston Public Health Commission, Boston Centers for Youth and Families, and Action for Boston Community Development and is aimed at combating childhood obesity. In addition, Sceppa is embarking on an effort to encourage exercise and better nutrition through collaboration with Boston-based La Alianza Hispana, a nonprofit agency serving the Latino community.
DPT students Maggie Goldberg and Christa Rocco are doing their first co-ops at the Hospital and Rehabilitation Centre for Disabled Children in Banepa, Nepal, a world away from the Boston teaching hospitals. They care for children with ailments virtually unseen in Western nations, such as polio, clubfoot and untreated fractures. Their hospital runs on electrical generators most of the day, which is not unusual due the country's less developed health-care infrastructure.
And the students love every challenging minute of it.
