Dr. Jan K Richardson PT, OCS, FAPTA is Professor Emeritus, School of Medicine with Duke University Medical Center, and recently Chief Medical Officer for Priority Care Solutions and has served as Chief Clinical Officer for Universal SmartComp since leaving Duke University in 2010. Richardson has also been Professor of Community and Family Medicine, Founding Chief of D.P.T., and Executive Director of the Department of Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy at Duke University Medical Center. She holds consultant and advisory positions with One Source Therapy, Multiple Energy Technologies, Thersys, TRS, Physical Medicine Research Institute, and was a board member for the US Bone and Joint Institute representing the American College of Rheumatology in 2012-2013. She served as founding Chair/Professor, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer for the Institute for Health Care and Research, Graduate School of Physical Therapy, Slippery Rock University. Richardson earned a Ph.D. and M.S. from the University of Pittsburgh, Certificate in Physical Therapy from the University of Pennsylvania, and BS from Pennsylvania State University.
Active in the American Physical Therapy Association at both the national and local levels, Richardson was President from 1997 to 2000, and has also served as delegate to the World Confederation of Physical Therapy, on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors, the ABPTS Task Force, and numerous committees. She has held leadership positions with both the North Carolina Chapter and the Pennsylvania Chapter, and for the Foundation for Physical Therapy and served as President of the Physical Therapy Fund and as a participant in the Consensus Conference on Research Priorities. She has volunteered her time with the Global Health Outreach Initiative at Duke University in India, Northwest Health Systems Corporation, and Western Pennsylvania Hospital Council. Currently she holds the office of Immediate Past President of the Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals of the American College of Rheumatology.
Richardson with her co-investigator, Chad Cook, pioneered early work in the establishment of valid and reliable scales for pain and disability. They investigated the dimensionality, internal consistency, and internal analysis of the NHAMES ADL instrument for patients with low-back pain and validated the NHAMES ADL scale for patients with cervical pain. In addition, they looked at the cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the Brazilian Portuguese version of the neck visibility index and neck pain and disability scale. Further areas of research included validation of an item bank for community-dwelling survivors of stroke, looking into the meta-analyses of HIV treatments supported by biomedical ontology, and investigation into the use of physical therapy in patients hospitalized with a diagnosis of generalized weakness.
Dr. Richardson just completed a chapter on “Non-Pharmacologic Interventions: Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation” for patients with Rheumatic diseases and conditions and has pioneered work in establishing valid, reliable scales for pain and disability. As primary author of a well-recognized orthopaedic text and having established both the third and fifth D.P.T. Programs in the country, Dr. Richardson has advanced practice, education, and research in the field.