Rate My Professor Diane Allen

Diane Allen is a Professor Emeritus of Physical Therapy in the Department of Physical Therapy at San Francisco State University, holding a joint appointment as Volunteer Clinical Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science at the University of California, San Francisco. She earned her B.S. in Physical Therapy from UCSF in 1978, M.S. in Medical Allied Health Professions with a neuromuscular emphasis from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1991, Ph.D. in Education focusing on quantitative methods and evaluation from UC Berkeley in 2005, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Measurement in Rehabilitation at Boston University in 2007. With over 20 years prior experience as a physical therapy clinician and instructor, she joined the UCSF/SFSU faculty in 2008 as Associate Professor, advancing to full Professor before becoming Emeritus in 2025. In Health Science, her career emphasizes advancing evidence-based physical therapy practices through rigorous measurement and outcome assessment.

Dr. Allen's research centers on neurorehabilitation, patient-reported outcomes, and measurement methods including item response theory. She developed the Movement Ability Measure (MAM) to capture patients' perceived changes in movement abilities post-therapy. Key investigations include balance and gait enhancements in multiple sclerosis via sensory augmentation such as Balance-Based Torso-Weighting, and balance loss patterns in Parkinson's disease and MS. As co-PI, she led an NIH NICHD R15-funded study on somatosensory intervention mechanisms in MS and a PCORI pilot grant project, "Mind the Gap," analyzing discrepancies between patient and clinician perceptions of abilities. Her publications encompass over 20 peer-reviewed articles, such as "Patterns of balance loss with systematic perturbations in Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis" (NeuroRehabilitation, 2021), "Association of Continuous Assessment of Step Count by Remote Monitoring With Disability Progression Among Adults With Multiple Sclerosis" (JAMA Network Open, 2019), "Variability in postural control with and without balance-based torso-weighting in people with multiple sclerosis and healthy controls" (Physical Therapy, 2014), and contributions to textbooks on muscle tone, balance and falls, and neuromuscular diseases. She has instructed in Doctor of Physical Therapy programs, neuroresidency training, and provided statistical consultation resulting in student-led meta-analyses published in peer-reviewed journals.