Rate My Professor Sue Lord

Sue Lord completed her PhD at the University of Otago in 2006, with a thesis entitled 'The relevance, measurement and attainment of community ambulation after stroke,' conducted through the Rehabilitation Teaching and Research Unit at the Wellington campus. During her association with the University of Otago's Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Department of Medicine (Rehabilitation), she supervised postgraduate students pursuing Master of Health Sciences degrees and contributed significantly to research in stroke rehabilitation and mobility recovery. Her work emphasized real-world functional outcomes for stroke survivors, including the assessment of community walking ability and the influence of environmental and task-related factors on gait performance.

Sue Lord's key publications from this period include 'Community ambulation after stroke: how important and obtainable is it and what measures appear predictive?' (Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 2004), which examined the predictors of independent ambulation post-stroke; 'Measurement of Community Ambulation After Stroke' (Stroke, 2005), which validated tools for evaluating real-life walking; and 'The effect of environment and task on gait parameters after stroke: a randomized comparison of measurement conditions' (Stroke, 2006), highlighting variations in gait across settings. Additional contributions encompassed studies on physiotherapy interventions for persistent mobility issues more than one year after stroke and concepts related to functional gait in everyday contexts. Her research at Otago advanced understanding of balance, mobility, and rehabilitation strategies for older adults and neurological populations. Subsequently, she held positions at the Institute for Ageing and Health, Newcastle University, and now serves as a senior research fellow in the Health & Rehabilitation Research Institute, School of Clinical Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, extending her expertise to falls prevention, gait-cognition relationships, and Parkinson's disease.