Pitt Physical Therapy Students Attend CSM 2020!

Tis’ the season of GIVING!

Welcome to our campaign! We are the University of Pittsburgh Doctor of Physical Therapy Class of 2020. There are 62 students in our class, and 54 (and counting!) of us plan to attend the Combined Sections Meeting (CSM) in Denver, Colorado February 12th through the 15th. Since we are graduating in December 2020 now, this will be the only conference we are able to attend as students. This makes it even more imperative that we attend! The cost of attendance and getting the time off to travel/attend CSM as a new graduate is challenging,so if students want the opportunity to go to CSM, now is the best time! 

Here is a Little Bit About Us:

Our class is made up of students from all over the United States; from living here locally in Pittsburgh to all the way from Arizona and California. We are studying hard to become the next great Physical Therapists to come out of the #1 Ranked Physical Therapy School in the nation! Our student organization, known as the Physical Therapy Graduate Student Association, is very active in the classroom, in clinicals, and in the community. Starting our second semester of Physical Therapy School, we began working in clinics throughout the Pittsburgh area and have impacted hundreds of patients. We participate in many community outreach programs such as providing strength and conditioning sessions to the Mighty Penguins sled hockey team, screenings for the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre dancers or to runners before big events in Pittsburgh, and training sessions for Pitt Adaptive Sports (previously known as the Steelwheelers) with athletes who play wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby, hand-cycling, and beyond. We even have students traveling to Guatemala on a service trip to provide free Physical Therapy services in pop-up clinics across the country! 

Here is A Little About CSM:

CSM is a yearly meeting of approximately 13,000 members of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) from 30+ different countries. CSM is a place where Physical Therapists and students go to stay up to date with all of the most current research and network with other Physical Therapists from around the world. In 2017, Dr. Tara Jo Manol gave the 22nd John H.P. Maley lecture titled, “Striking While the Iron is Hot.” The focus of this lecture was to address how there is a wide variability in Physical Therapy practice, and how standardization of practice can be achieved through keeping up with the best research. For example, if two patients get referred to Physical Therapy for back pain, they should receive similar treatments based on the evidence available. If one patient receives moist heat and electrical stimulation only, and the other patient receives exercise in addition to the modalities the first patient received, that accounts for variability in practice! This affects insurance reimbursement, and most importantly… our patient outcomes! Events like CSM help to tackle this issue with variability in practice, and it is crucial for students to attend as we will be the next generation of clinicians leading this battle.

The Early-Bird Rate for student APTA members for this conference is $290. To offset this high price for our peers, our class has hosted a variety of fundraisers prior to launching our EngagePitt campaign. We hosted a Trivia Night in May which was fun and educational for everyone who attended! Additionally, we hosted an Interdisciplinary Event in which students from Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech Language Pathology, Pharmacy, and many more professions attended. Luckily, with these fundraisers, we were able to fundraise $1,200. To continue to provide funds for the number of students attending, EngagePitt is our final push, and we need your support!

We would greatly appreciate if you would help us obtain our goal of helping as many of our classmates as possible to attend CSM. The funds we raise from EngagePitt will subsidize the Early-Bird rate for all students (if we raise the whole rate for 54 students = $15,660). Any money raised over this goal will offset the cost of travel and lodging for attending students (an additional $500-$1,000 per student). Additional funds raised over these expenses will be set aside for students attending the CSM of the APTA in Orlando, Florida next February 2021.

Thank you for your time learning about our group and fundraiser!

Happy Holidays and Hail to Pitt!