The School of Rehabilitation Therapy at Queen’s University today announced the first holder of the new Canadian Chiropractic Research Foundation Professorship in Rehabilitation Therapy. Simon French, an internationally regarded chiropractic scholar from the University of Melbourne, will spend the next five years at Queen’s.

The Canadian Chiropractic Research Foundation (CCRF) is focused on building the chiropractic profession’s capacity to undertake innovative research nation-wide, and funded the professorship through the Queen’s initiative campaign.

“We are extremely grateful to the Foundation for this generous gift that has enabled us to bring such an esteemed researcher and educator to Queen’s,” says Marcia Finlayson, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and Director of the School of Rehabilitation Therapy. “Ultimately this is a win for Canadians because the gift provides a tremendous boost to our research in an underrepresented, but important area of rehabilitation science and to our training of outstanding therapists.”

Dr. French comes to Queen’s from the University of Melbourne School of Medicine where he was Chair of its Human Ethics Advisory Group and a Research Fellow at the Primary Care Research Unit and the Australasian Cochrane Centre. He is well known for his research into improving clinical practice in primary care settings, including management of acute low-back pain, management of dementia, and the use of massage and spinal manipulative therapy for mid-back pain.

Since 1976 the CCRF has supported clinical, biomedical, health services research and population health studies in order to mitigate the burdens of health, disease, illness, injury and disability that so many Canadians needlessly endure.