Elise Keeney, PT, DPT, SCS

Dr. Elise Bjork Keeney (she/her) received her Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from The University of Texas at Austin in 2011. She then completed her Doctorate in Physical Therapy from Texas Woman’s University in Houston in 2015 and returned in 2021 to begin the PhD program in Physical Therapy. She has also taken Master’s level coursework through the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, in which she focused on Liberation Theologies with the hope of connecting those methodologies to the battle of systemic oppression within the healthcare system.

After completing a Sports Residency through Evidence in Motion in 2016, Dr. Keeney became an American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties (ABPTS) Board-Certified Sports Clinical Specialist and has worked in outpatient sports and orthopedics for adults and pediatrics. She was also the Head Physical Therapist for the Austin Sol and the Austin Torch professional ultimate frisbee teams from 2016-2019.

Dr. Keeney was a Faculty Lab Instructor for four years in the Flexible Doctor of Physical Therapy program at the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences before being promoted to Core Faculty in the Residential DPT program in 2021. Dr. Keeney’s research interests operate at the intersection of social and structural determinants of health, humanistic teaching and practice, and sports physical therapy with current projects on the psychosocial aspects of blood flow restriction training, improving physical therapy care for gender-diverse people, and validating a wellness screening tool for postpartum individuals.