HPU professor earns two prestigious awards for work in ACL injury research

By Ryan, March 29, 2016

By Sam Rakestraw // Staff Writer

With sports injuries on the rise, a great deal of research is being done to combat the problem. High Point University director and professor of physical therapy, Dr. Kevin Ford, has recently received two prestigious research awards for manuscripts he co-authored on Sports medicine research.
On March 6, Ford accepted the 2016 Clinical Research Award given for accomplishments in research for diseases and injuries within the musculoskeletal systems. It was presented to him by the Orthopedic Research and Education Foundation at their headquarters in Orlando. The manuscript for which Ford was given this award is entitled “Mechanisms and Prevention of ACL Injuries: Cutting ACL Injury Risk with Finely Sharpened Tools.”
“My undergrad was exercise science, my masters and PhD is in biomechanics,” Ford said. “I’ve been studying it for nearly 25 years.”
Ford teaches classes at HPU in the area of exercise science, studying the world of sports injuries. He is currently in his fourth year teaching biomechanics after previously working in the college of medicine at the University of Cincinnati for 12 years.
The exercise science professor has published and worked on at least 100 peer-reviewed articles, some of which have been placed into medical journals where they can be referenced and utilized. Ford also wrote a chapter for one of the in-class textbooks.
“Dr. Jeff Taylor and I recently wrote a chapter in a textbook that the physical therapy students use,” Ford said. “It teaches proper landing movements to reduce the risk of knee injuries in athletes. A lot of what we do is write research manuscripts, and so we publish multiple papers a year for different medical journals.”
The two awards Ford accepted were both based on his research on ACL injuries, a topic he heavily emphasizes.
“The way the research works is that you have a certain topic area that you focus on,” Ford said. “While in biomechanics, you can focus on lots of different things and that’s what my research is kind of geared towards. We could teach all kinds of concepts and not just theories on the ACL. So I separate my teaching from my research. ACL injuries is a serious issue in sports, so we take that knowledge of biomechanics and try to apply it to ACL injuries.”
Ford was also given the 2015 O’Donogue Sports Injury Research Award for his work on “Utilization of ACL Injury Biomechanical and Neuromuscular Risk Profile Analysis to Determine the Effectiveness of Neuromuscular Training: A Prospective Cohort Double Blind Randomized Controlled Trial.” He accepted this award from the American Orthopedic Society for Sports and Medicine during the summer of 2015.
“These are two exceptional honors for our research team at High Point University to receive,” Ford said. “I am especially grateful to have the opportunity to continue to work alongside innovative and well respected experts from research institutions in North America and Europe.”