Host: Elane V Scott

In a matter of weeks, Birth2Work Radio will be celebrating its first anniversary. We have grown from a mere idea to a viable voice for America’s community stakeholder leaders, with listeners from across the country and around the world as part of our weekly audience. It didn’t happen overnight. It took persistence, the ability to identify issues others could not see, and the willingness to act.

Such is the story of this week’s guest, Judy Towne Jennings, a Physical Therapist for over 40 years, who I am honored to have joining me and co-host Rick Stephens on Birth2Work Radio this week.

As frequent listeners to this program have likely surmised, the majority of the stakeholder leaders we have interviewed have been personal contacts and immediate associates of ours. But this week’s guest is one I sought out from the national news, as the work she’s involved with is so startlingly in alignment with Birth2Work’s goals and the work I’ve been doing in early child brain development since 1978. It was in this year’s August 9 issue of Newsweek where I first read Judy’s name. In Christina Gillham’s interview “Giving Your Baby Enough Tummy Time,” Judy gave thought provoking answers, born of her own experience as a physical therapist, on the crucial importance of “tummy time.” Giving babies regular time on their stomachs while they are awake and supervised is critical for developing a baby’s motor skills, core strength, and laying the pathways for proper brain development.

In her role as a practicing physical therapist, Judy persisted in providing the best care she could, even as she noted that critical physical milestones of many of her youngest patients were slowly failing to develop at the age her experience and training told her to expect. Meeting these developmental milestones for her youngest patients had become increasingly problematic. For Judy, after some time, it was a natural next step to look outside her own practice and ask if she was the only physical therapist experiencing this phenomenon. Indeed, in coversations at conferences with her peers at the American Physical Therapy Association, she learned she was not. But why did it matter anyway? If you care about your children’s ability to do well in the future, you won’t want to miss this interview.

In this very special week of Thanksgiving, we at Birth2Work express our gratitude to you, our listeners for the opportunity to deliver an important message every week, through the voices of outstanding Community Stakeholder Leaders across the country.

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