Joshua Burns, PhD

I have devoted my career to exploring gait deficits and other movement disorders, primarily in children. My team measures and manages peripheral neuropathy as well as the mobility-related impacts of catastrophic pediatric diseases.

As Director of the Disability Prevention Program, which encompasses the Gait & Mobility Lab, our team uses 3D motion analysis protocols to assess patients’ motor function. We collaborate with the Center for Experimental Neurotherapeutics (CENT) to design and validate functional outcome measures for precision medicine trials and explore new digital health technologies, such as wearable inertial sensors, to measure how patients respond to therapies at home and in the community. 

We work closely with Dr. Kirsten Ness and the Human Performance Lab, which evaluates the function of long-term pediatric cancer survivors as part of the St. Jude LIFE study and conducts clinical trials of rehabilitative interventions to increase physical activity. While the Human Performance Lab conducts a range of assessments to understand the full physical spectrum, the Gait & Mobility Lab uses the most advanced technology available to assess walking ability over time. What we measure in both the Human Performance Lab and Gait & Mobility Lab will help physicians and therapists better manage the physical condition of pediatric cancer patients, childhood cancer survivors and children with neurologic disorders.

Data collected in the Gait & Mobility Lab will leverage data from the 1000 Norms Project, an ongoing research program established in 2014. The clinical catalog of human variation includes over one million age- and sex-specific normative reference values for common functional outcome measures that assess key aspects of motor function in everyday life. Researchers worldwide have used the database — available at www.ClinicalOutcomeMeasures.org — to develop clinical outcome measures for a range of neurological and musculoskeletal disorders. 

As the Gait & Mobility Lab evolves, we plan to develop a Global Certification Standard to enable study sites worldwide to accurately and reliably perform gait assessments developed in the lab. Doing so will allow us to expand our research and help more patients who experience debilitating nerve, muscle and brain disorders across the lifespan.