Gerold Stucki
Gerold Stucki
Director and Steering Committee, ICF Research Branch
Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences & Medicine at the University of Lucerne
Director, Swiss Paraplegic Research
Director, Center for Rehabilitation in Global Health Systems
Gerold Stucki, MD, MS is Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine at the University of Luzern, and Director of Swiss Paraplegic Research in Nottwil, Switzerland. He received his medical education at the University of Bern and obtained a Master of Science (MSc.) in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health and a diploma in Biostatistics and Epidemiology from the University of McGill, Montréal, Canada.
During his appointment as Chair of the Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (PRM) at the Ludwig-Maximilian University from 1999-2009, Prof. Stucki pursued clinical research in PRM and musculoskeletal medicine, and developed a new research agenda for human functioning and rehabilitation research. His clinical research focused on the development of concepts and programs for multidisciplinary rehabilitation service and care provision in the acute hospital, inpatient rehabilitation, post-acute community care and prevention programs.
Prof. Stucki's research agenda has been collaborating with the World Health Organization's (WHO) Classification, Terminology and Data Standards team in an international effort to implement the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) in rehabilitation and the health sector in general. To facilitate human functioning sciences research, Prof. Stucki had initiated the ICF Research Branch at the former Institute for Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich as an international research network under the auspices of WHO´s German Collaborating Center for the Family of International Classifications. Since 2005, he has been developing the Swiss Paraplegic Research (SPF) into a research institution with a comprehensive perspective. The goal of the SPF is to contribute to optimizing the quality of life of people with spinal cord injury (SCI) as well as "to learn for and from SCI" for the benefit of people with SCI and other health conditions. With his teams at the ICF Research Branch and SPF, Prof. Stucki has been playing a key role in WHO´s ICF research and implementation activities.
In August 2009 he was appointed as Professor and Chair of the Seminar of Health Sciences and Health Policy (now Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine) at the University of Luzern. Among other things, the Faculty facilitates the translation of research into practice - all with the goal of optimizing the functioning and social inclusion of people with health conditions. The section of Rehabilitation and its associated Center for Rehabilitation in Global Health Systems, a WHO collaborating centre, will focus on strengthening rehabilitative health strategies and researching them accordingly.
Since 2012, Prof. Stucki has been a Foreign Associate of the Institute of Medicine, a part of the US National Academies whose mission is to advise decision-makers and the public on matters of health and medicine.