CPHAR Fellows Biographical Information

Tiffany E. Shubert, MPT

Dr. Tiffany E. Shubert has a joint appointment as a Scientist at the Institute on Aging and the Center for Aging and Health, and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the UNC Division of Physical Therapy.

Dr. Shubert received a BA in Communication at the University of California at San Diego, a Master’s of Physical Therapy from the University of California at San Francisco, and her Ph.D. in May 2007 from the Curriculum in Human Movement Science at UNC Chapel Hill.

Dr. Shubert’s research is focused on identifying factors that contribute to healthy aging and implementation of effective falls prevention interventions. She is recognized nationally as a leader in falls prevention and developing bridges between research and clinical practice. She has been asked to speak at national meetings on this subject. She developed a community based intervention to promote physical activity and prevent falls for older adults. She has successfully disseminated that intervention to three senior centers in North Carolina. She was the lead author on the North Carolina Roadmap for Healthy Aging, a web-based “wiki” designed to catalog all evidence-based programs in North Carolina and to quantify health conditions for older adults at the county level.

Dr. Shubert currently teaches advanced geriatric courses to masters and doctorate students in the division of Physical Therapy. As part of the Donald W. Reynolds grant through the Division of Geriatrics, she developed and currently teaches a course for third year medical students titled “The Stealth Geriatrician”. This course takes place monthly at local retirement communities, and provides medical students the knowledge and the skills necessary to perform geriatric functional assessments. She contributed to the development and assessment of a falls risk assessment clinical exam that all medical students must past with proficiency before completing their medical education.

Dr. Shubert is a practicing physical therapist and is responsible for implementing the satellite clinic of the Division of Physical Therapy Faculty Practice at the Orange County Senior Center. She is an active member of the American Physical Therapy Association, the Gerontological Society of America, and the International Society for Aging and Physical Activity.

Dr. Shubert enrolled in the human movement science doctoral curriculum in 2002 and proposed her dissertation topic, “Development of the Variety of Activity Questionnaire” in July 2005. Her advisor was Dr. Carol Giuliani. During her doctoral training she assisted Dr. Carol Giuliani with organizing and conducting community based wellness assessments for older adults, and she developed and piloted a training program for senior volunteers to be lay exercise instructors at local senior centers. Her teaching responsibilities include lecturing to first and second year medical students, and she was the primary instructor for “Physical Therapy for Older Adults”, a special topics class for Physical Therapy graduate students in spring, 2005.

Selected Publications

Shubert, TE. Guiliani, CA, McCulloch, K, Hartman, M. “The effect of an exercise-based balance intervention on physical and cognitive performance of older adults: A pilot study” JGPT. 2010;33:157-164

Shubert, TE. “The Use of Commercial Video Games to Promote Physical Activity in Older Adults”, Annals of Long-Term Care: Clinical Care and Aging. 2010;18:27-32

Streets, D, Devlin, L, Shubert TE. North Carolina’s Roadmap for Healthy Aging. The North Carolina Medical Journal. 2008;69:370-371.

Gordon PL, Sakkas GK, Doyle JW, Shubert, TE, Johansen KL. “Relationships between vitamin D, muscle size, muscle strength in patients on hemodialysis”. JRen Nutr. 2007;17:397-407

Shubert TE, Caprio, A. “The Stealth Geriatrician: How To Find Out What You Need To Know From Your Older Adult Patients.” The Portal of Geriatric Online Education (POGOe) 2006. Available at http://www.pogoe.org , product ID18920

Johansen KL, Painter PL, Sakkas GK, Gordon P, Doyle J, Shubert T. Effects of Resistance Exercise Training and Nandrolone Decanoate on Body Composition and Muscle Function among Patients Receiving Hemodialysis: A Randomized, Controlled Trial. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2006;17: 2307-14.

Sakkas GK, Kent-Braun JA, Doyle JW, Shubert T, Gordon P, Johansen KL. Effect of diabetes mellitus on muscle size and strength in patients receiving dialysis therapy. Am J Kidney dis. 2006;47:862-9.

Shubert TE, Schrodt LA, Mercer VA, Busby-Whitehead J, Giuliani CA. Are Scores on Balance Screening Tests Associated with Mobility in Older Adults? JGPT. 2006;29:33-39.

Henriette van Praag, Tiffany Shubert, Chunmei Zhao, and Fred H. Gage. (2005). Exercise Enhances Learning and Hippocampal Neurogenesis in Aged Mice. The Journal of Neuroscience, 25(3):8680-8685.