This webinar will highlight the unique current and potential collaboration between the specialties of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R)/Physiatry and Urogynecology and focus on how together we can achieve our shared vision of optimal care for women's pelvic health.

1. To understand how PM&R and Urogynecology share in the patient goals of functional recovery and quality of life.
2. To describe opportunities for unique collaboration across our specialties for female pelvic health and build interdisciplinary clinics.
3. To differentiate PM&R referral versus pelvic floor PT referral.
4. To review musculoskeletal contributions for female pelvic health beyond the pelvic floor.

Colleen M. Fitzgerald, MD, MS is a board certified physiatrist (Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R)), attending physician and Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery, the Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation, and the Department of Urology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. She serves as Medical Director of the Health Sciences Campus Clinical Research Office, Medical Director for the Chronic Pelvic Pain Program, Research Director for the Division of Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery and Assistant Dean of Medical Student Research.

Dr. Fitzgerald’s areas of clinical expertise and research include chronic pelvic pain, pelvic floor myofascial pain and dysfunction, pelvic girdle pain in pregnancy and postpartum, musculoskeletal medicine, pelvic floor disorders and pelvic rehabilitation. Dr. Fitzgerald received her medical degree from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in 1996 and completed her post-graduate training at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in 2000, where she served as chief resident. She also received a Masters degree in Clinical Investigation at Northwestern in 2011.

She is a former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health  (BIRCWH) Scholar (2008-2012) and NICHD K23 Awardee studying “Mechanistic Distinctions in Female Pelvic Pain Subtypes”.  She an active women’s health clinical researcher as Co-Investigator for the Loyola U01 Prevention of Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms (PLUS) NIDDK grant and has been funded on several other foundation grants including the Interstitial Cystitis Association and the PM&R Foundation. She served on the International Pelvic Pain Society Board of Directors/Executive Committee from 2015-2020 as President in 2019. She is the past Co-Chair and scientific committee member for the World Congress on Low Back and Pelvic Pain. She is also an active member of the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, the Association of Academic Physiatrists, and the American Urogynecologic Society. She serves as a faculty mentor in the Loyola University Chicago Physician Vocation Program and is a faculty member of the Loyola chapter of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.

In 2021, she was awarded the Loyola Medicine Health Care Hero Award and acknowledged for the past 5 consecutive years as top 10% faculty by the Loyola Wolf and Kettle Teaching Award.