Empowering Health: The Vital Role of Physical Therapists in Combating the Non-Communicable Diseases

Course overview

Statistics support that 88% of US deaths are attributable to NCDs. Although death rates associated with some of the 4 major types of NCDs cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes see some trending down, the drops largely are related to drugs and surgical interventions and not in preventive lifestyle changes. In addition, there are those NCDs leading to disability that also impose many burdens on society. Physical therapists PTs need to be familiar with the health burden of those noncommunicable diseases NCDs leading to mortality and leading to disability, and many will even say that the physical therapy profession has a role in addressing that burden. If the profession wants to achieve the latter, it has work to do, and this presentation will look at potential roles of the PT.