Alumni and Friends Making an Impact

Led by the desire to do good, Matt Day began searching for ways to provide physical therapy for people in need. Six years later, Day and his students are working weekly at a charitable clinic to aid in Daytonians’ recoveries.

“There’s a community need for accessible health care and this is a really great opportunity to provide education for our students. It’s not just the clinical experience, although that’s an important aspect, but providing students with an opportunity to support the community,” said Day, a UD associate professor of physical therapy. “We’re serving diverse populations, and that’s important for them as practitioners. They need that experience to do their jobs and care for their patients well.”

Day began working in the community in 2017, but found a home in 2020 at Good Neighbor House, a local nonprofit with a charitable medical clinic, dental clinic and other non-medical services. He provides physical therapy at no cost to uninsured patients there on Fridays.

“Matt has been such a tremendous help in our medical clinic,” said Michelle Collier, executive director of Good Neighbor House. “We see patients who are injured and in pain, who wouldn’t be able to get this help without him volunteering his time and skills.”

Day also is using his time in the clinic to improve free physical therapy by researching the effectiveness of their techniques, like sending video links of exercises directly to patients. He hopes to better understand the relationship between a patient’s improvement and how consistently they followed through with exercises, which can be particularly challenging for low-income or underserved populations who may not have access to regular transportation and other resources.

His graduate assistant and UD physical therapy student, Camryn Yacks, is involved in the research and has been working with Day at Good Neighbor House for more than a year. In addition to learning how to apply theory in practice at the clinic, Yacks learned how to work with non-English speakers, navigating cultural differences and language barriers.

“Service is an integral part of our program, it’s why I chose to come to UD,” Yacks said. “If we’re not leaders as students, it’s really hard to be leaders as clinicians, so we’re setting the standard for all of our students within the first year to get involved. We’re not doing it just to check a box, it’s because we become better clinicians and life-long service-leaders.”