The University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions recognized seven graduates with 2023 Outstanding Alumni Awards at a celebration November 4 during PHHP Reunion Tailgate weekend. This year, the college made important changes to the alumni awards program, including soliciting nominations and creating award categories that reflect various areas of impact where alumni are making a difference in their profession and community.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP, INNOVATION AND THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Marnie Danielson, M.H.S., OTR/L (BHSOT ’96)
Marnie Danielson opened her first private pediatric practice in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2004 providing P.T., O.T. and speech therapy services. During that time, she co-founded a children’s video company, The TV Teacher, LLC, which is dedicated to teaching a neurodiverse population handwriting and prewriting skills using a therapeutic approach. She went on to co-write and star in six award-winning educational children’s videos that are now streamed around the country in classrooms, homes and therapy clinics. She attends and lectures at national conventions representing the TV Teacher curriculum, as well as various pediatric topics. She sold her clinic in Atlanta when she moved to Dallas, Texas in 2009, where she currently owns a private practice serving preschools and elementary schools. She consults with schools and lectures to teachers, parents and colleagues around the country. She is a year away from receiving her post-professional doctorate from the University of St. Augustine.
COMMUNITY IMPACT
Bobbi Pineda, Ph.D., OTR/L (MHSOT ’94, RSD ’06)
Bobbi Pineda is on the faculty of the University of Southern California, where she leads work in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Therapy Lab and studies the NICU sensory environment. She is an author of the Supporting and Enhancing NICU Sensory Experiences, or SENSE, program, which translates the scientific evidence into a practical resource that health care professionals can use to engage parents in developmentally appropriate and evidence-based interventions with their infants each day of NICU hospitalization. The goal is to improve parent participation in the NICU while optimizing infant sensory experiences, improving infant outcomes and increasing parental confidence and competence. She is the principal investigator on a National Institutes of Health RO1 funded study investigating the impact of SENSE programming. More than 400 hospitals in the U.S. and abroad are working toward implementation of the SENSE program to improve the NICU sensory environment in order to optimize outcomes of high-risk infants.