As part of a medical mission trip, faculty member Sharae Tejada furthers the reach of USC physical therapy on the African content in hopes of continuing to develop sports and exercise medicine in Uganda.
Only weeks ago, Sharae Tejada ’07, DPT ’11 found herself halfway around the globe — in Uganda — as part of a team of seven physicians and three physical therapists fulfilling a mission for Canada-Uganda Sports & Exercise Medicine, an organization dedicated to the advancement of sports medicine in Uganda.
During the two-week medical mission trip, the team split their time between teaching a three-day course and providing treatment as part of an open clinic for national athletes from the worlds of track and field, volleyball and basketball.
It was the first trip in which the physical therapists were also invited to teach. Tejada and her colleagues taught a course focused on on-field assessment and treatment, return-to-sport testing and movement analysis to students at the Mbarara University of Science and Technology.
We caught up with Tejada, a clinical instructor of physical therapy who completed her orthopedic residency at USC in 2012, to see how her first trip went.