Katie Kowalski
Assistant Professor
Katie Kowalski is a Teaching Scholar and early career researcher whose CANSpine research is focused to using a comprehensive assessment of low back pain to match patients with treatments best suited to their needs. Using physical measures and patient reporting outcome measures of low back pain, Katie aims to identify mechanism-based subgroups of low back pain, for targeting with best treatments.
Low back pain is the largest contributor to the global need for effective rehabilitation. Despite the high prevalence, determining the origin of symptoms is a clinical challenge, made worse by unidimensional assessments in complex and heterogeneous patient presentations. Accordingly non-specific low back pain is the leading diagnosis, contributing to ineffective approaches to treatment. Therefore, using a 360° assessment of low back pain, Katie aims to aid clinical reasoning for stratified care that targets treatments to subgroups based on mechanisms of low back pain.
Katie engages in interdisciplinary collaborations through data collection at the CANSpine Laboratory clinical site locations at Victoria Hospital and Fowler Kennedy Sports Medicine Center. She prioritizes co-designed research with the Spinal Pain Patient Partner Advisory Group, who provide critical input throughout the lifecycle of research to ensure her research is meaningful and relevant.
