NASA's First Physical Therapist

Story by Sara Knuth

Regis alumna helps astronauts return to Earth as NASA’s first physical therapist

When NASA’s astronauts return to Earth, Regis alumna and U.S. Air Force Maj. Danielle Anderson — the space agency’s first physical therapist — is there to help them readjust to gravity. It’s a role she has been preparing for since her time at Regis, when she decided that she wanted to help people perform at their best in extreme environments.

Anderson has done that — and more — by taking her career to arguably the most extreme environment: space. Anderson, a 2012 Regis doctor of physical therapy graduate, has been a member of the Air Force since shortly after she graduated. Currently based at Johnson Space Center in Houston, her day-to-day work falls under NASA’s Space Medicine Operations Division, where she regularly achieves her goal: “I wanted to be able to provide services and make [astronauts] feel at their best as they were operating in these really unique, austere environments,” Anderson said.

Anderson provides a spectrum of care to astronauts, from injury prevention to fitness to rehabilitating injuries. When the astronauts return to Earth, Anderson and the human performance team help them get their bodies back to prespace conditions.

In the decades since it first sent humans into space, NASA has studied the impacts of zero-gravity on the body, from vision changes to shifts in blood flow. In space, muscles and bones adapt to the lack of gravity. To help strengthen these muscles while they’re in space, astronauts exercise two hours a day.

Still, this training doesn’t capture all the muscles that people use every day back on Earth. “When we’re not in a weight-bearing environment all the time, our bones aren’t loaded,” she said, like they are under Earth’s gravity.

When astronauts return to Earth, Anderson and her team of two athletic trainers and a strength coach spend two hours a day for 45 days with them, focusing on readapting to gravity. The team’s primary focus is restrengthening astronauts’ mobility, neurovestibular system (reflexes and the perception of movement in relation to gravity), and cardiovascular system, as well as their strength and endurance.

Since she started last year, Anderson has helped and observed nine astronauts recover from the harsh conditions of space.

When Anderson was considering joining the Air Force as a physical therapist, she remembered clinical training she completed at Regis with former military physical therapists. She admired their skill in caring for patients. “Their level of expertise, their level of care and the way they communicated with their patients was just very different than any environment I had leading up to that,” she said. “I wanted to pursue that excellence.”

She also thought about service members like her cousin, an Army Ranger. “I wanted to support people like him,” she said.

After graduating from Regis, Anderson was commissioned into the Air Force and served in Afghanistan, where she was the physical therapist for service members and members of NATO forces.

After earning a Doctor of Science degree from the Army-Baylor Doctor of Physical Therapy program at Baylor University, she went to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where she led an orthopedic and rehab flight and helped set up an orthopedic physical therapy residency.

All her training led her to the ultimate physical therapy position at NASA, modeled after similar programs in special warfare and flying communities in the military. In April, that work was recognized when Anderson was named the Air Force’s Biomedical Clinician of the Year.

For Anderson, the position has been the next leap in a career that has focused on helping people perform at their best. Her husband Justin and daughters, Collins, 5, and Raegan, 3, have helped support her through her career.

Anderson said her time at Regis still impacts her. “The thing I think Regis and the military have in common — and why I love Regis so much — is a sense of service before self,” she said.