Blue Ridge Country - September/October 2019 - 66

"We eliminated the question of increased carOESH's products are 3D
tilage degeneration as a byproduct of gender,"
printed on-demand from
low-impact sustainable
says Kerrigan. Measuring stress experienced by
materials.
men and women while walking or running
barefoot, rates were the same. "Before, obesity
was the only known cause that we could manage. Now, we understand bad shoes are almost totally to blame."
Kerrigan's newfound star-power led to an offer to become
the first female chair of the University of Virginia's Department
of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Looking to research
healthier footwear, she accepted in 2002.
"By this point, I'd become a mom," she says. "Before, I felt a
kind of social obligation to myself, my peers, my grandmother-I
wanted to help women have better joint health and mobility in
their old age. But with my daughters, I saw the entire system was
wrong: It was structured to produce debilitation."
Playing whistleblower wasn't enough; Kerrigan wanted to affect change. She started working with major shoe companies as
a medical consultant.
"But they refused to make anything but trivial adjustments,"
she says. "It became very clear they had no interest in investing
in an overhaul that would require them to change everything
about how they designed and manufactured their shoes. They
were using me as a PR stunt."
In 2009, Kerrigan published a second paper. This one proved
a variety of features found in traditional women's athletic and
dress shoes increased "joint torques related to stresses and strains she launched the world's first line of 100% healthy footwear.
in muscles, ligaments, tendons and joints." Still, changes didn't
"Though it saddens me to say, these are the only shoes on
come.
the planet that are designed to work according to and with our
"I found myself faced with a moral imperative," she explains. body's natural biomechanics," says Kerrigan.
"I realized that, if I didn't do something about this, no one
Additionally, OESH's products are 3D printed on-demand
would."
from low-impact sustainable materials. The approach makes the
Within a year, she'd quit her job at UVA, secured funding from shoes the most environmentally friendly option on the market.
the U.S. National Institute of Health, and founded the OESH shoe It also enables Kerrigan to invite customers to her instore factory
company in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia. Six years later, for a custom assessment of their biomechanics. The advances
have led to further funding-including grants from the National
Science Foundation.
Today, OESH offers a complete line of footwear. Options include running, casual and dress shoes, as well as hiking sandals
for men and women (costs
range from $90 to $130).
Though the company focuses
on women, Kerrigan says she
hopes to develop new options
for men in the future.
"Looking back, I could've
kept my posh job as a university professor and made a
bucketload of money pretending to help shoe companies,"
she says. "But I couldn't do
that. I needed to show my
daughters that, when you see
something wrong with the
world and it's in your power
to change it, that's what you
need to do."

Aghast, she returned to Harvard to
found one of the world's first 3D
gait and motion laboratories. There,
she made an astonishing discovery:
Poorly designed footwear was at fault.

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Blue Ridge Country - September/October 2019

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