A Message from the Executive Vice President and Provost
Dean, School of Medicine

I am very pleased to share a noteworthy accomplishment of Kenneth J. Ottenbacher, PhD, OTR, Professor and Russell Shearn Moody Distinguished Chair in the School of Health Professions. Dr. Ottenbacher was named the recipient  of the 2010 Edward Lowman Award by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM) at its annual conference last month.

The award’s namesake, Ed Lowman, MD, served as Professor and Clinical Director of Rehabilitation Medicine at the Rusk Institute of New York University where his strong conviction about the importance of an interdisciplinary team in the care of individuals with severe disabilities earned him great respect in the field of rehabilitation medicine. Legislatively, Dr. Lowman promoted the inclusion of physical medicine and rehabilitation services in the Medicare program and was key to the ratification of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the predecessor of the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR).

Dr. Ottenbacher received this prestigious award in recognition of his significant contributions to rehabilitation medicine in promoting the spirit of interdisciplinary rehabilitation research and education. Dr. Ottenbacher serves as Director of the Division of Rehabilitation Sciences and Senior Associate Dean of the School of Health Professions. He also serves as Director of the Center for Rehabilitation Sciences and Associate Director of the Sealy Center on Aging. Dr. Ottenbacher is the Coordinator of the rehabilitation sciences curriculum in the Population Health Sciences Graduate Program and holds a joint faculty appointment in the Department of Internal Medicine.

Dr. Ottenbacher has published more than 250 peer-reviewed articles, four books and a substantial number of invited presentations, lectures and workshops, of which he has been cited more than 3,700 times. His contributions to developing an infrastructure for graduate education and research in rehabilitation, disability and recovery at UTMB have been extraordinary. He has been principal investigator on 17 federal grants totaling over $13 million including most recently, an NIH grant titled, "Center for Rehabilitation Research Using Large Datasets," which includes a consortium of investigators providing $4.2 million over five years to build research capacity by increasing the quantity and quality of rehabilitation research using large administrative and research datasets. Under the leadership of Dr. Ottenbacher, the rehabilitation sciences PhD curriculum ranked eighth among 375 kinesiology, exercise science, and rehabilitation programs in the US, according to the Top Research Universities Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index published by the Chronicle of Higher Education (2007). His research program was the primary factor for the School of Health Professions’ top ten status in terms of NIH funding among such US schools in 2007 and 2008.

Dr. Ottenbacher, a native of Missoula, Montana, earned his PhD in special education and rehabilitation from the University of Missouri, Columbia, in 1982 and is a licensed occupational therapist since 1973. Please join me in congratulating him on this well-deserved award from the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine.

Sincerely,

Garland D. Anderson, MD
Executive Vice President and Provost
Dean, School of Medicine
Thomas N. and Gleaves T. James Distinguished Chair