Howard Rusk

Howard Rusk (born April 9, 1901, Brookfield, Missouri, U.S.—died November 4, 1989, New York City, New York) was an American physiatrist who is considered the founder of comprehensive rehabilitation medicine in the United States.

Rusk earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri (1923) and a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania (1925). He trained as an internist in St. Louis, where he set up a private practice before entering the Army Air Forces Medical Corps as a major during World War II. Stationed near St. Louis, he was exposed to the military’s bimodal system of rehabilitation: patients were deemed convalescent, in which case their activities and duties were tightly restricted, or they were declared ready for duty and returned to the physical rigours of normal military life.

Rusk designed a new multidisciplinary retraining program that used psychological, physical, and vocational training to gradually increase the functional state of recovering airmen. Rusk’s approach was unique in that it emphasized the importance of emotional and social reconditioning in addition to physical rehabilitation. The benefits of Rusk’s method were confirmed by experimental demonstrations, and the U.S. Army and Navy soon implemented versions of it in their medical facilities.

After the war Rusk brought his methods of comprehensive rehabilitation into civilian life. In 1948 he founded the Institution of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (later renamed the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine) at New York University. Rusk was also active as a public proponent of rehabilitative medicine, and from 1946 to 1969 he published a weekly column in The New York Times that dealt with health, rehabilitation, and veterans’ issues.