Shari McDowell, PT, DPT, has been a part of Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia since 1992 as a physical therapist, educator, and an administrator. She is a licensed clinician with expertise in the areas of physical therapy (PT) in the intensive care unit and acute management of patients following spinal cord injury (SCI). She served as the PT lead for a large, multi-center study, SCIRehab, which sought to find relationships between therapy activities and best outcomes to enhance the rehabilitation process. Along with multiple publications related to the SCIRehab study, Dr. McDowell co-authored “Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury” in Darcy Umphred’s Neurological Rehabilitation. Dr. McDowell also co-authored a study related to SCIM III outcomes in post-acute SCI and seeks to further support critical benchmarking for outcomes data most relevant to rehabilitation following SCI.
Dr. McDowell became the Director of the Spinal Cord Injury Program at Shepherd Center in 2012. In this role, she is responsible for overseeing the care for inpatient and post-acute day program/outpatient services for people with a spinal cord injury. Dr. McDowell is accountable for all Spinal Cord Injury Program-specific operations including budgetary oversight, program development, research collaborations, quality outcomes review, and compliance with regulatory agencies such as The Joint Commission and the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Hospitals (CARF). In this role, she has served as the PI and/or grant awardee for over 550K in funding to support physical and mental health and wellness programs for individuals living with spinal cord injury.
Dr. McDowell received her BS in Physical Therapy from Georgia State University in 1986 and her Doctorate in Physical Therapy from the University of Montana, Missoula in 2012. She previously served as the chair for the injury prevention committee for the American Spinal Injury Association and the Secretary of the Spinal Cord Injury Special Interest Group in the Neurology Section of the American Physical Therapy Association. Dr. McDowell has been an active member of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) and the Georgia chapter of ACHE since 2018.
