APTA has pledged $1 million to the Foundation for Physical Therapy to help create the Center of Excellence (COE) for Health Services/Health Policy Research. 

The COE will provide training for physical therapy researchers to conduct health services/health policy (HS/HP) research. HS/HP research will examine physical therapy resource utilization, costs, and quality, and will identify the most effective ways to deliver, organize, finance, and assess outcomes of health care services.

Academic institutions will compete for funds to start the nation's first training program to develop physical therapy investigators in HS/HP research. The selected institution must promote an intellectual environment that attracts members of the physical therapy profession to HS/HP research, provide research experience, mentorships, and opportunities for collaboration with scientists from other disciplines, and conduct pilot projects leading to future high-impact health services research studies.

Read more about the COE at www.apta.org/.