Helping people with complex chronic illness understand their bodies, and build days that work with them.

Dr. Valerie Iovine Rogers, PT, DPT

Dr. Valerie Iovine Rogers, PT, DPT, is a nationally recognized physical therapist, educator, and program manager specializing in complex chronic illnesses, with a particular focus on connective tissue disorders and autonomic dysfunction such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS) and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS). She currently serves as a Program Manager at the Cohen Center for Recovery from Complex Chronic Illness (CoRE) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she leads educational initiatives, develops clinical training for hypermobility and dysautonomia management, authored ATLAS, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai's Autonomic Rehabilitation Framework, and its manual, founded the Iovine Cluster, co-authored the IACCI Provider Manual (2nd ed.), and contributes to ongoing research into underrecognized multisystemic conditions.

Dr. Rogers earned her Doctor of Physical Therapy and Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences through Drexel University's accelerated program, graduating magna cum laude (BS, 2019) and summa cum laude (DPT, 2021), with multiple leadership roles and honors. She later earned a Certificate in Wellness Counseling from Cornell University, graduating summa cum laude. Her academic journey has been marked by a deep commitment to patient advocacy, interprofessional collaboration, and the advancement of evidence-informed care models for underserved populations.

Before joining Mount Sinai, Dr. Rogers founded the EDS and POTS Clinical Specialty Program at Strive Physical Therapy. Under her leadership, the program grew rapidly to serve over 100 hypermobile patients annually, and she led a special interest group training physical therapists across the tri-state area to better understand and manage connective tissue disorders and autonomic dysfunction. Today she continues to train physical therapists across many PT companies.

Dr. Rogers has received numerous accolades for her work, including being named Strive Physical Therapy's Clinician of the Year and receiving the Outstanding Healthcare Provider of the Year award from the Ehlers-Danlos Society, an honor voted on by the patient community. She has presented nationally and internationally, including as an invited speaker at the Global Learning Conferences hosted by the Ehlers-Danlos Society in Dublin, Ireland (2023) and Philadelphia (2024).

Her research focuses on objectifying assessments of joint laxity in individuals with EDS, including collaborations with experts like Dr. Dawn Gulick. She has also contributed to the development of clinical pathways for POTS management within major healthcare systems, and leads research projects at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai alongside Dr. David Putrino. A strong advocate for early recognition and interdisciplinary education, she has developed and delivered outreach programs for school nurses and other frontline healthcare providers to improve early identification of connective tissue disorders. She also founded and ran BendyBodyBlog, educating patients and providers on disability management from both the clinician and patient point of view.

Driven by empathy, precision, and a passion for innovation, Dr. Rogers continues to push the boundaries of rehabilitation science to ensure that patients with invisible illnesses are not only seen, but understood, supported, and empowered.

I love the color orange, I love sunsets and watching the moon rise. I love my cat. I rescued her first, but she rescues me pretty often. (I love all pets. So much.) I am a Phillies fan. I don't necessarily follow trends, yet love a good hype! Excited people are fun! When my body allows me, I love to cycle! I do this via Peloton at home a lot, or my orange tricycle down the shore. (Don't stop what you love doing, modify when your body is setting boundaries! Bike → Trike!)

I am addicted to chocolate. I think my sense of humor was built from the goofy randomness in iCarly, but now I love New Girl more than any other show. I am a Raven-puff, Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff combo, for any others that feel at home with the Wizarding World. I clear my mind by crafting. Some days that is crocheting, beading, painting. I just like getting lost in creativity. I listen to a lot of music, but Andy Grammer is how I keep positive, and Frank Sinatra can help calm me down too. I love the idea of nature but have an irrational fear of bugs, so balance, ya know?

Other hobbies besides crafting and seeing my friends and family include thrifting, reading, and audiobook-ing, and I know this sounds so nerdy but... I also love learning. I have won some pretty cool awards in this crazy career path I've taken, but I have to admit, the one that makes me happiest was in high school: Most Likely to Brighten Your Day. I hope that sentiment comes through in everything I do for as long as I live. :)

I am extremely passionate about what I do. It feels like a part of me. I have spoken at a number of conferences on various topics: some deep in the scientific weeds, some rehab focused, some mental health geared, and others on how to manage life living with chronic illness (and that's what I share about on Instagram, @drvalrogers). My role at Mount Sinai really takes a lot of what I was trying to do anyway, but allows me to spread education and awareness and bring light to innovative ideas.

I was told when I was younger that I "had an inside out brain." Things that were easy for others I would find a way to complicate, and things that seemed harder were what made more sense to me! I always came up with innovative backwards ways to do things. As a kid it was silly things like opening the banana at the other end to avoid the strings, but it's morphed into some cool, creative rehab techniques that have really helped people! I didn't know that not everyone's mind worked in pictures until I found myself in a growing group, helping my peers understand kinesiology in my doctorate program, and coming to this realization. It's things like that that make me appreciate my own uniqueness.

I also was lucky enough to attain my doctorate of physical therapy while already knowing I wanted to specialize in hypermobility, so I had the unique opportunity to learn everything and then question, "and what would happen if the connective tissue or nervous system was faulty?" My dad always told me, "If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life." So I am spending my days doing something I'd want to as a career, but would also choose to do even if it weren't a job. And if you can't tell from this About Me, I really struggle with keeping things short, and I am an open book. Use my experiences to help you with yours, please!!!

"That's too rare."

I was always a clumsy kid. Constant ankle sprains, fingers bending back weirdly, not holding a pencil right. Just little things I didn't know were signs of anything. My cousins and I had flexibility contests (plot twist: they have EDS too). Eventually, those "silly little things" became real problems.

In high school, I had my ankle reconstructed after a trampoline accident. A few years later, I needed the same surgery again. The surgeon, who had just been interviewed as one of the top doctors in the area, told me, "I've never seen this come undone before." I came to find out later, he actually noted hypermobility in my chart at that point, but I didn't know it yet!

Through college, I was constantly dealing with pain and dizziness. I chalked it up to stress or being "just sensitive." Then one day in a kinesiology lecture, my professor said, "Everything would work like this... unless you have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome," and immediately brushed it off. But I sat straight up. I felt that.

I ran up to her after class: "That's me!! I think that's it! I think I have that thing you said, will you say it again for me please?!" And she told me, "Oh no, don't worry, that's too rare. You'd be in a wheelchair." I couldn't even spell it right for a while, but I kept trying to Google it now and then. It always stuck in my brain as maybe this is it... yet this is all I knew of it at the time, so I mostly dropped it.

Years later, in a pathophysiology class, we were asked to choose a rare disease to present on. I picked Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, still considered rare at the time, and I devoured the literature. The 2017 diagnostic criteria had just been released. And I fit it.

So I found doctors who understood. I traveled to Mount Sinai. And I finally got my diagnosis.

I know I'm lucky. I have a big, supportive family and amazing friends who believed me. Since that day, the journey has only continued: unraveling the neurological pieces, the comorbidities, the daily challenges.

But I've come a long way. I've grown to acknowledge this for what it is: a disability. And saying that doesn't make me weaker. It makes me stronger. I don't let it define me, but I let it inform me. I use it as fuel to help others find answers faster than I did.

As years went on, I collected more diagnoses. Dysautonomia got more specific, and I was diagnosed with POTS after passing out early on in grad school. I was threatened to be a "burden to a clinical site," and told that if I didn't stabilize myself before clinical, I wouldn't be able to keep moving forward in my graduate studies. SO I did. I found my answers. I documented and trialed medications until I was stable enough to then trial my own upright titration protocol, and rehabilitated myself to a place where I was able to go to clinical as scheduled. Because I was late to commit, since my school had blackballed me a little, I landed an opening that had arisen late. Lo and behold, that opening was at Strive Physical Therapy, where I went on to found their EDS and POTS program and run the largest EDS Special Interest Group in the tristate area. Today I still train physical therapists there and at many other PT companies. Everything happens for a reason.

Next was my MCAS diagnosis.

Then the spinal instabilities, including CCI and AAI. Then Chiari. I had a fusion and Chiari decompression neurosurgery in June 2023. Then came the tethered cord. It's been quite the rollercoaster.

My recovery from my neurosurgery was going fantastically for a few months! I was beating all the milestones. But as the tethered cord worsened, I found myself back in a very hard stage. So I had that surgery too. Recovery wasn't easy, but I have more good days than I did before, and that's all I can ask for.

Some days I can walk without a mobility aid! Other days I use forearm crutches, and for something I really want to do but know will set me into quite a flare (usually because of the seats, actually), I bring my wheels!