Press Named to Inaugural Chair at Rehab Institute

CHICAGO --- Joel Press, M.D., medical director of the Spine & Sports Rehabilitation Centers at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) and assistant professor of clinical physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, has been named to the inaugural Reva and David Logan Distinguished Chair in Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation at RIC.

David Logan, who had survived cancer and was returning to his active lifestyle, suffered a pinched back nerve which brought him to RIC's Spine & Sports Rehabilitation Center. Logan underwent physical therapy under the medical direction of Press and was soon able to return to his regular workouts, tennis matches and long hikes.

RIC's musculoskeletal rehabilitation practice provides non-operative treatments to conditions and diseases affecting the musculoskeletal system including low back pain, neck pain, pain affecting the ankle, foot and knee, shoulder pain and athletic injuries.

Press is the author of "The Couch Potato Workout: 101 Exercises You Can Do At Home," published in 2006. In June 2007, he rode his bicycle 3,861 miles across country in the "Ride for Rehab" to raise awareness of the critical role that physiatry and rehabilitation play in restoring function and improving quality of life for all patients.

Press completed his internship at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and his residency at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. He has been an attending physician at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago since 1988, and in 1989 he founded the Sports Rehabilitation Program at RIC.

He is the past president of the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and a past president of the Physiatric Association of Spine, Sports and Occupational Rehabilitation as well as the North American Spine Society.