After four years of work, Neumann, an associate professor of physical therapy in the College of Health Sciences at Marquette University, and a group of collaborators have created a one-of-a-kind video that analyzes and demonstrates kinesiologic principles with the assistance of 11 persons with quadriplegia (those who have muscle paralysis and loss of sensation in the arms, legs and trunk.) The video, co-directed by Neumann and Michelle Lanouette, a physical therapist at the Zablocki Veterans Administration Medical Center in Milwaukee, shows the methods of maximizing the abilities of persons with quadriplegia. A wide range of movements, from sitting up in bed to getting in and out of a wheelchair, are analyzed on the video by Neumann. The patients then demonstrate the skills.

The video, Clinical Kinesiology Applied to Persons with Quadriplegia, funded by a $75,000 grant from the Paralyzed Veterans of America, is designed for classrooms and clinical settings. Through the grant, the video will be distributed across the country to state PVA chapters, spinal cord injury rehabilitation centers, and occupational and physical therapy education facilities.

Producing the video wasn’t as simple as turning on a camcorder. During two years of planning, Neumann and Lanouette worked with the staff of Marquette’s Instructional Media Center to plan the production and film the patients as they went through a series of movements and exercises with Neumann.

Neumann says, one often-asked question by people who suffer spinal cord injuries is, ‘How can I ever function again?’ Neumann and his team edited 60 hours of tape to create a two-and-a-half-hour presentation of patients overcoming their challenges by learning to increase the efficiency of performing certain movements.

He has high expectations for the video and believes it will motivate neck or spinal cord injury patients to train, "to get the most out of their physical potential, which then helps them get the most out of life."

Neumann has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to teach at the Kaunas Medical School in Lithuania this fall. While in Lithuania, Neumann will help start that country’s first university-based physical therapy program and facilitate a national continuing education seminar on kinesiological concepts that relate to spinal cord injury rehabilitation.

One other goal of Neumann’s is to work with the government and medical school in Lithuania to translate the video into the Lithuanian language.

He is the first Marquette University physical therapy professor and the first College of Health Sciences faculty member to receive a Fulbright.

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