You're listening to the PT Podcast,
where smart people in healthcare come to
make noise.
Here's your host, Jimmy McKay.
I said we were going to be live
here a lot from APTA's CSF in Anaheim,
and we are.
And there we are.
Becky Craig,
thank you for coming to the show.
Thank you.
And dropping by.
You're busy over there.
You're elbow rubbing.
You're schmoozing.
I'm trying.
You're doing these things.
So your background was in research,
or is it pronounced research?
Is that...
Depends on which part of the country
you're from.
Is that the pinky in the air version
of I'm into the research?
Either one is highly acceptable.
So you had a pretty distinguished career
at Arcadia University.
I did.
In Pennsylvania.
And you somehow slipped me in the side
door to be on the board of trustees
for a really great organization that I was
lucky enough to be exposed to as a
student because of a faculty member.
Right.
which is the Foundation for Physical
Therapy Research.
So for people who don't know what that
is, what do they do?
What is the big goal?
What is the North Star of the foundation?
The biggest goal is to collect evidence to
determine if what physical therapists do
really works.
The proof.
In the pudding.
That's exactly right.
And it's not to study to determine that
it will work.
It's to determine if it works,
which is a big difference.
So you have to be unbiased to do
the research and you have to have a
lot of money.
And so that's the ultimate goal.
We've come so far since nineteen seventy
nine,
which is when it was started with Charles
Magistro.
And he said he imagined at some point
that we would have twenty five million
dollars as an annulment.
And now we have thirty one.
So so we have surpassed his vision,
which is remarkable.
So it's just so much fun.
And it took all that time to train
researchers because physical therapy
really is a clinical practice.
And so to attract people to.
into a field that is almost antithetical
to clinical practice and go through that
training and then take that training and
apply it back takes a long time.
And in nineteen seventy nine,
there weren't a lot of programs that
trained to do physical therapy research.
So I went to a medical school physiology
lab.
Others went to anatomy labs.
Others did basic animal research because
that's how we could get trained.
Yeah.
Now you can go to a school where
the faculty members are doing physical
therapy research.
And they're not only looking at sort of
why things work,
but now they're able to say,
does it work?
And then finally, is it cost effective?
So it's a huge shift since nineteen
seventy.
So when people listening who are not in
research.
get to say, well, the literature,
the research says a lot of that,
not all of it,
but a decent amount of it starts with
grants from the foundation.
Yes.
So it's so cool.
So back to your question.
The purpose is to train investigators and
to provide small grants to give them pilot
data so that they can launch their career
in getting funds from the government or
other foundations that are much larger
than ours.
To create sustainability.
Correct.
We're going to give you this.
But we don't want you to keep coming
back to us forever.
The goal is to give you this,
and that's your start.
That's right.
We're a leverage.
When we do that,
what does the research of our own
researchers look like?
They go on to get more funding.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
Something like six hundred million
dollars.
Something around that.
Yeah, something like that.
Follow on funding.
Exactly right.
Let me make sure I get this right.
We have given out X amount of funds.
The people that we give that to wind
up going on getting more funds from other
We've created researchers and they go on
and get more funds to do more research
about our profession.
Yes, and I'll use me as an example.
So I started out with a ten thousand
dollar grant from the foundation to do my
research and the last grant that I had
was ten million dollars as a co-principal
investigator from the government.
So that's a big investment that we've
made.
The foundation was the first domino and
that led to domino after domino.
I'm going to go in a different direction.
I've heard this name a lot,
even when I've been on the board.
I've heard stories.
But who is Charles Magician?
And not just his resume.
Who is the person?
It's hard to think about how to talk
about him.
His father was a shoemaker.
So he said he had to make sure
that his children knew how to make shoes.
And that's what he always talked about
with the profession.
He wanted physical therapists who knew how
to do physical therapy.
He was a pharmacist aide.
I think that's what it was called in
the military.
And he was on a ship where there
weren't a lot of other health care
professionals.
So he got to help with surgeries.
It was it.
And that gave him insight into what you
could do in medicine.
But he decided to become a physical
therapist.
And he knew what our skill sets were
and throughout his career tried to push us
into roles that were beyond just doing
technical stuff, not being technicians,
but being leaders.
And he saw the future is brighter if
we can produce our own research and
researchers.
Right.
To make us professionals.
Right.
We needed a body of knowledge.
So he just was amazing.
So there's a lot of people who might
be listening or have done research who
might not know his name,
but they felt the ripples of the things
that he did.
Oh, yeah.
I think so.
Yeah.
And certainly we do.
We have a Charles Magistro grant.
Correct.
Because people have given money in his
name to develop an endowment to support
Charles Magistro.
Let's talk to someone specific right now.
Someone who I call them,
they're on the edge of the diving board.
They're like, okay,
I've heard about this thing called
research.
Seems interesting to me.
I don't know how to get started.
Where would you send someone who's been
around but doesn't have a person to go
to?
They don't have a person like you in
their Rolodex.
What are some suggestions you'd say to
that person who has maybe the desire and
just wants to know where to get started?
There's so many ways,
so many different ways.
So if you're working in an academic
center,
you're in a hospital in an academic
center,
then I would go to pick a department
that aligns with your interests.
So if you're interested in understanding
movement,
then see whether there are investigators
in the university that are doing movement.
If you can't do that because you're
nervous,
I'd call the foundation and ask for
connections.
And people can do that?
Yes, absolutely people can do that.
And what will happen is that they'll
refer, based on where people live,
opportunities.
You know people who know people who know
people.
Yes, exactly.
Because that's the most wonderful thing
about our profession.
Everybody's connected and willing to help.
Pretty willing.
The batting average is pretty high asking
people to help.
Yes, I think so.
The way I got exposed to the foundation
was through...
competition, I don't like losing.
I mean, I don't mind losing,
but I definitely don't like not showing
up.
So this was sort of put in front
of me as a little bit of a
challenge,
which is good because that's what it's
called.
And the challenge for us was,
and the profession is,
how many dollars can each academic program
in the profession make and bring?
uh i decided to do a well i
said we're gonna do a lot of work
for one day and we did a five
k and schools do a lot of different
things and and the program is called the
marquette channel right where i should say
the marquette delaware yes this year
delaware market delaware market
And what this is, listen,
I'll break it down for you.
This is a fundraising event with bragging
rights on the line every single year.
And it's been going on for a long
time.
You don't have to be able to raise
a million dollars to be a participating
organization, participating school.
But you've been around before the
challenge and now.
And why was it so sort of innovative
and impactful when it first came around?
I think when you think about a foundation
with the mission of supporting research,
you want it to be sustainable.
So you have to develop the next
generation.
And so the thought at the time was
if students were engaged in fundraising
for the foundation,
first they would learn what the foundation
does so that if they were interested in
research,
they would have heard about this as a...
Soft exposure, right?
Yep.
And then the other was to help them
understand that giving is really important
and that the foundation exists because of
donations with the hope that we could grow
them up to become donors.
Yeah.
And in that haystack,
we shake out a couple of needles and
a couple of research.
Now, here's a weakness.
Here's a problem.
is donating now,
we know how research works.
I mean, you do, I say we,
I mean you.
It takes a while to see the results
of that.
But if we stop funding research,
nothing's gonna happen the first day,
or the first week, or the first month.
But you'll notice that,
pause in funding a year, five years,
ten years,
and it's going to take even longer to
get back.
So how do you communicate the need for
continued when maybe the feedback loop
isn't as fast?
How do you explain why it's so imperative
not to cut off funding?
I don't know how you...
You have to, first of all,
you have to value research.
You have to, as a clinician,
the evidence has to mean something to you.
You have to think that it helps guide
your practice.
And if you believe where that comes from,
then you want it to continue.
And without funding,
everything's changing so dramatically.
We don't have one practice.
The practice has changed so dramatically,
we have to continue doing the research in
order to determine whether or not the new
stuff works.
So without funding, then,
we're not going to be able to look.
And again,
you won't notice it on day one or
month one.
And then you won't get reimbursed.
It always comes down to payment.
Then you're not going to get...
There's no evidence to support this
intervention, so why should...
Medicare pay for it or insurance
companies.
I mean,
so it all is so tied together.
It's just it's invisible.
It's hard to see.
You really got to look.
You're exactly right.
Without it, you're in trouble.
Big trouble.
Yeah.
What is.
Well,
I think we've seen some of that this
year with or last year with the changes
in government leadership and grants going
away that were people's.
had whole teams together who lost their
grants and that dispersed the whole team
so that even with a reversal in funding,
the teams dispersed.
Some of them are working in Europe,
some are in Canada.
You've lost your impetus.
Institutional knowledge.
You knock a train off the track,
putting it right back on,
it's a standstill.
You've got to get that going.
You've been with the foundation for...
Ever.
Okay, good.
Got it.
So you understand institutional knowledge.
Yes.
What would success look like in five or
ten years from now?
What's your BHAG, your big, hairy,
audacious goal?
This gives you a chance to be sort
of like Charles Matricio,
set a bar really high that maybe we
can't get over, but we will.
So I love the idea of being able
to provide small amounts of money to do
pilot studies that then leverage into
larger grants.
We are interested in doing research that
won't necessarily be funded by someone
else.
So for example,
our whole interest in cost effectiveness
work,
which is so important to us,
I don't know that you can go.
I know you can't right now go to
NIH and ask for grant money.
So a dream would be to have a
big grant so that we could fund
cost-effectiveness research as part of the
foundation's dream.
And if we can't go to NIH or
other big organizations,
where does that money come from?
Is that us?
It's us.
They're around here.
Exactly.
And so to develop collaboration,
so it would be more than the foundation.
It could be partnerships with vendors.
Sure.
It could be partnerships with other small
foundations.
Right.
if the interest is to look at
cost-effectiveness.
A shared interest is a shared direction.
Correct.
Many hands make lighter pockets.
Exactly.
Or heavier pockets.
A heavier pocket.
You're right.
All right.
Every episode that we do,
we have this thing called the parting
shot.
That's just your last chance for a mic
drop moment.
Is there something you've always left
students with when you were in the
classroom more regularly?
Like, hey, listen,
I know I'm going to get one shot
at leaving my one soapbox statement.
Did you have one of those?
Was there like a North Star for you?
Don't make enemies.
Ooh, that's smart.
Yeah.
That's it.
It takes effort to make enemies.
No, no, no.
Well, I feel like it does because, like,
it's easier to – I feel like it's
easier just to be neutral or kind than
it is to be an enemy.
Well, of course.
That's true.
And I'm like,
why are you burning calories to burn a
bridge?
Because it's just not natural.
It's not, yeah.
Perfect.
Becky, Craig,
appreciate you coming on here talking
about something that's very important for
our profession,
something that's probably a little bit
invisible that we'd like to make more
visible.
Yes.
Let's change and reverse that.
Yes.
Appreciate you doing that.
Thank you.
Thanks for being live here from CSM.
Thank you.