Page 46 - Harnett Life Winter 2022

Campbell University Receives $1.1 Million

for Osteopathic Research

*A philanthropic gift was recently made to Campbell University to support Dr. Tom Motyka’s
research on musculoskeletal dysfunction and pain.

“As a rising 3rd year student, she completed Sim Month and
passed her boards, then she totally changed her life in a mat-
ter of a few weeks. She was set to start rotations, but once we
were able to offer her the fellowship, she quickly moved back
and changed her plans.”

The Inaugural fellow is participating in several research proj-
ects funded by the gift, teaching in the OMM labs for first and
second year medical students, and shadowing Dr. Motyka in
clinic to receive more OMT training and practice.

While Motyka is the head of the fellowship, other members of
the Campbell Medicine faculty - currently, Drs. Gish, Foster,
Petrovic and Hinkelman - are also serving as principle inves-
tigators for bench research and the basic science research spe-
cific to osteopathic principles and treatments.

“All of the projects relate to musculoskeletal dysfunction and
pain; we’re planning projects to examine the mechanisms of
prolotherapy and dextrose injections in an animal model along
with a variety of other projects including motion capture in hu-
man subjects.”

“Some work has previously been done in humans, but nobody

Dr. Tom Motyka

Dr. Motyka is an associate professor and Chair of Osteopathic
Manipulative Medicine and will administer several projects
examining musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction including ef-
ficacy of osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) as well as
prolotherapy.

The anonymous gift was also designated for the creation of
an Osteopathic Research Fellowship for medical students and
provided funding and support for other projects related to mus-
culoskeletal dysfunction and pain research. The research fel-
lowship will serve as a gap year program and is intended to
further training and experience in research specific to osteo-
pathic medicine.

The first fellow, Cailee Dean, started July 5th and will con-
tinue for the entirety of the 21-22 academic year. Dr. Motyka
expressed is thanks for Student Doctor Dean’s willingness to
embark on this project as the inaugural fellow.
Cailee Dean
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