Efforts to improve access to pelvic health resources earn award for Yassi Zarbafian DPT ’20

When a young professional who’s early in her career sees gaps in the healthcare system and jumps in to try to address them, people tend to take notice. This is why one alumna, Yasaman (Yassi) Zarbafian, PT, DPT, OCS, is getting some well-earned attention and has received a reward for her project to address access to resources for those with pelvic health conditions like urinary incontinence, pelvic pain and constipation.

Zarbafian, a 2020 graduate of the Doctor of Physical Therapy program, says Mass General Brigham University’s ability to combine education and clinical practice gave her a very solid base as an orthopedic and generalist physical therapist. But it was her clinical experience once she started her career that sparked her interest in specializing in pelvic health.

“What really drew me to pelvic health was that it’s complex and interdisciplinary nature of it. It’s a very private area of people’s lives that can really affect their quality of life,” says Zarbafian, who is a senior physical therapist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an instructor at Mass General Brigham University. “Also, so many people are impacted by it — some estimates show that one in three people will have a pelvic health condition at some point in their lifetime. And it’s not just women; men can experience pelvic health conditions as well.”

Zarbafian saw the disconnect between the great need for pelvic PT care and the limited number of PT specialists who could provide it. “Many people also don’t realize that physical therapy is a way to treat these conditions. But I was seeing in our clinic that it’s hard to get in for treatment. With three- or four-month waiting lists for an initial consult, people are waiting months to get treatment.”

Her solution was to work with colleagues across Mass General Brigham system including Kristina Anwyll, a pelvic PT from Wentworth Douglas Hospital, and Alexis Griffin Bonhomme, a urogynecology fellow at Mass General Hospital who shared her passion to address disparities in access to pelvic health and to develop the plan for a centralized, accessible pelvic health resource hub for providers and patients. One of the goals of the hub is to support patients while they’re waiting for specialty care and help providers feel more comfortable providing reliable research-based resources to their patients. It’s not intended to replace specialty care like pelvic PT, but rather extend it, giving patients a way to understand their symptoms and manage them in the interim while they wait to see a specialist.

Their project was awarded a grant from Mass General Brigham Springboard Studio as a recipient of their annual Design Impact Award, which is open to all Mass General Brigham employees who are early-stage innovators with an idea to make healthcare more user-friendly for patients and providers.

Now that the project is being implemented, Zarbafian is getting to know some of the challenges of taking a project from idea to execution. After meeting with stakeholders and making decisions about where information can be stored and who will maintain it, the current plan is to establish the hub within Epic’s EHR system, so providers will have a reliable collection of patient education materials on hand when they’re consulting with a patient with a pelvic health condition. “It’s been a really rewarding learning experience and interesting to see how many different pieces have to come together for a project to be implemented,” says Zarbafian.

She’s excited to see how the project performs once it’s launched and how they can monitor results, whether that’s through download rates, patient questionnaires, or changes in specialty demand. She’s also looking forward to exploring the ways a program like this can be expanded beyond her particular institution and community to provide access to many more people.

When she reflects on her experience in the DPT program and how it’s inspiring her career, Zarbafian cites the incredible spirit of mentorship, which has extended beyond just her time as a current student. She mentioned that her former professor Keshrie Naidoo, PT, DPT, EdD, now chair of the Physical Therapy department, still connects with Zarbafian to offer advice and has helped her navigate different healthcare systems.

As well as benefiting from her mentorships, Zarbafian has made an effort to give back by returning to the Institute as a guest speaker, seminar leader, and capstone faculty adviser.

“The Institute is so open to alumni coming back, which has been a really rewarding experience. I love that I can come back at different times in my career and help. It has gotten me interested to continue teaching, which is something I never thought I would do if you asked me before I went to the Institute.”

Ultimately, what Zarbafian takes away from the project, and from her career development so far, is how much it reinforces her desire to address not just the immediate problems people face in healthcare, but the systemic causes of those issues.

“Providing [one-on-one] care gives you that immediate satisfaction and feeling of being able to help someone who’s right in front of you. But there are so many other things we can do to help the system improve, and I'm excited to do that. I think being a part of the Mass General Brigham system opens a lot of doors for me to try to do that.”