Dr. DeJong Lempke is a Clinical Assistant Professor with the Exercise & Sport Science Initiative within the School of Kinesiology at the University of Michigan. She received her Bachelor’s in Athletic Training at the University of Pittsburgh in 2016, and her Master’s in Kinesiology-Athletic Training and PhD in Kinesiology-Sports Medicine at the University of Virginia in 2017 and 2021, respectively. She additionally completed her postdoctoral research fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital with The Micheli Center for Sports Injury Prevention in 2022. Her research primarily focuses on biomechanical contributors to running-related injury using wearable technologies, and incorporating objective, data-driven approaches to patient interventions and injury risk reduction efforts. And she is this Quarter's IWB Quarterly Paper Highlight found here!
What is something you want people to know about this project that you don’t get to share when writing the manuscript?
Even though the collaborators of this project were listed as either co-authors or acknowledgements in the paper, I really want to highlight the importance of the interdisciplinary approach to this project. This was really a team effort of biomechanics researchers, sports medicine clinicians, statisticians, and data scientists that helped make this project idea into a reality. I think a diverse research team approach is extremely helpful to maximize project strengths and ensure overall success in study conception, delivery, interpretation, dissemination, and translation to the field.
What was your biggest Win in this project?
The biggest win for me was really that the intervention program helped patients to subjectively feel better, and to reach the minimally clinically important change for decreased leg pain! While changing patients’ biomechanics was the target goal of the intervention, this may have not otherwise been a meaningful intervention if it did not serve to alleviate patient symptoms. Overall, the intervention shows a lot of promise for advancing care for runners with exercise-related lower leg pain, which in my view is a definite win.
What was your biggest challenge/failure in this project?
The biggest challenge was that the project finally got approved for recruitment right before the global pandemic, and so data collection occurred as restrictions began to ease. In terms of finding the silver lining, I think that the in-field intervention model and ability for patients to perform home exercises really helped with the success of the project and in limiting patient exposures throughout the study.
What advice would you give to someone who might be about to undertake a similar project, that you have learned as a result of this project?
My main advice for similar projects comes from a nugget of wisdom from my PhD mentor Jay Hertel that “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” I think moving from one-size-fits-all approaches should be avoided and really creating specific interventions to patient deficits is key.
How do you hope this paper will influence biomechanics research (next lines of research? Clinical implications? Performance implications? Translational implications? Etc.)?
I hope that this study emphasizes the importance for any intervention study to consider location for the ideal delivery of the intervention. This study showed the promise of outdoor gait-training for runners, and I think supports that meeting patients at their “home turf” might be more impactful and lead to more successful patient outcomes.
Have the results of this paper/project lead you down a certain path, if so, can/will you elaborate?
This project has really pushed me forward to expansion to other running-related injuries for a data-driven approach to intervention, to encourage runners to adopt biomechanical patterns that facilitate retention in sport/physical activity without struggling with pain due to injury.
What is your favorite thing about doing biomechanics research?
My favorite thing about doing biomechanics research is really thinking about the mechanisms by which we move and interact with our environment to achieve a task or activity. Examining running biomechanics in particular allows us to investigate small deviations in movement patterns that may not even be visible to the naked eye, but really get at the nitty gritty of what factors are contributing to completing successive gait cycles.
What is your ultimate biomechanics research goal?
My ultimate goal with my biomechanics research is to move towards clinical translation of findings conducted in more controlled studies to injured runners clinic or other sports medicine clinics to improve care for athletes. I think wearable technology offers a huge opportunity for adoption into clinical sites to alleviate the burden on clinicians to perform gait assessments and interventions during scarce visit time and resources. Instead, taking models employed during research may be carried over to these settings to facilitate assessment and intervention for injured athletes, and ultimately move the needle forward on patient care.