Dr. Armando Fuentes recently completed his ARRT fellowship at NYU Rusk Rehabilitation. While doing so, he focused on racial and cultural health disparities in traumatic brain injury. In October 2018, he began working as a clinician at the World Trade Center Survivors Clinic in Elmhurst Hospital, where he hopes to build a culturally informed mental health and clinical training program. He graduated with his PhD in clinical psychology from Fordham University where his research focused on culture, health beliefs, and neurocognition among Latinx patients living with HIV.
In this interview, Dr. Fuentes discusses: his presentation at a Rusk course on October 20 and 21, 2018 to highlight some of the latest evidence in complex TBI rehabilitation; clinical practice guidelines in general and for TBI patients from racial and ethnic groups in particular; outcomes in overall functioning by members of minority groups compared to whites; and lower retention rates in TBI research by Hispanics one to two years post-injury.
Dr. Estelle Gallo is a Clinical Specialist at the Rusk Rehabilitation NYU Langone Ambulatory Care Center. She is a certified clinical specialist in Neurology from the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties who specializes in adult neurological rehabilitation. She serves as a faculty member of the accredited physical therapy neurology residency program and holds a faculty position as a Research Assistant Professor in the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Department at NYU School of Medicine. She has received internal funding for her research. Dr. Gallo has published her work in several peer-reviewed journals as well as presented at both national and international conferences. Currently, she is conducting a feasibility and safety study on high level mobility training in patients with non-progressive acquired central neurological injuries. She also serves as a member of the Locomotor Training Clinical Practice Guidelines Knowledge Translation Task Force for the Academy of Neurologic Physical Therapy. She received her doctorate degree from New York University.
In this interview, Dr. Gallo discusses: the ability to run a short distance in the rehabilitation of patients with acquired brain injury; existing evidence to make recommendations about the examination and intervention for high level mobility and to facilitate a return to running; examination techniques and outcome measures that are used; objective criteria used to guide initiation of high-level mobility training; recent developments in clinical practice guidelines on outcome measures for the neurologic population; upcoming recommendations about locomotor training, research being done in the physical therapy department to test the feasibility and safety of high-level mobility training; and some key rehabilitation research topics in physical therapy and some emerging areas.
Liat Rabinowitz is the Program Manager of Speech Language Pathology at Rusk. Her experience has been in evaluation and treatment of adults with acquired brain injury with a specific area of interest in cognitive communication impairments and working with patients in disorder of consciousness. Most of her current work involves managing the Speech Language Pathology department, along with supervising and training staff. A native of South Africa, she trained as a therapist at the University of Cape Town. Her master’s degree in speech-language pathology is from Columbia University. She currently teaches as an adjunct faculty member at NYU-Steinhardt school on language disorders in adults and has taught cognitive disorders at Columbia University.
In this interview, she discusses: meaning of the term post-confusional state and kinds of available treatment for it; interventions to treat acquired stuttering; language, cognitive communication, or swallowing disorders associated with the occurrence of a TBI and what can be done from the perspective of speech-language pathology; impairment of conversational ability following a brain injury; key topics within the realm of rehabilitation research in speech-language therapy; and the most common kinds of symptoms involved in post-traumatic amnesia.