Physical Therapy Month revitalized under UB’s DPT Club

During Physical Therapy Month, meant to “raise consumer awareness about the many benefits of physical therapy,” according to the American Physical Therapy Association, events spotlighted the PTs, PTAs and students doing the work of transforming lives through movement.

Students in the University at Buffalo’s Doctor of Physical Therapy program opted to celebrate their future profession a bit differently, while still honoring the core of their mission.

“Community service and things like that are important for the field of physical therapy,” Josh Manning, immediate past president of UB’s DPT Club, said, “We set out … to push the university forward and build a program and get us back into the community as public servants for Buffalo.”

Membership in the club is automatically given to students enrolled in the 3-year clinical doctorate program.

Manning helped oversee the planning alongside fellow club officers and PT Club faculty liaison Michael Seils, clinical assistant professor in UB’s Department of Rehabilitation Sciences. Together, they coordinated this past October’s events, which included the club’s participation in the 2025 Walk to End Alzheimer’s on Oct. 11 at Buffalo’s Outer Harbor and a weekend-long food-packing mission to support children and families in countries facing economic instability

Manning said his goal was one strong community service event for membership to dig in and leave a positive benefit for the community and if a second event happened that was just a bonus.

But Manning himself is a busy guy. Finishing up his last few weeks of class, he handed off much of the organizing to his successor in the club, current President Eden Yarbrough.

Yarbrough took the responsibility and ran with it, working with UBSPHHP’s Health on Wheels mobile clinic at the Alzheimer’s Assoc. event where about a dozen students walked and helped raise awareness of Alzheimer’s disease, physical therapy, and UB’s new mobile health unit.

Mission accomplished. “Well, sort of”, Manning said.

The revitalization of the DPT Club and its celebration of PT Month came later. Part 2 left one alumnus of UB’s PT program floored.

Kim Kotz, ’81, helps organize a food packing event for the organization Feed My Starving Children, which provides emergency rations to war-torn and economically destabilized countries meant to ease childhood hunger.

Kotz, who practiced physical therapy for about 20 years before helping found the Villa Maria College PT assistant program, teamed up with Michael Seils, and a small contingent of UB PT students a year ago. Word spread as Manning and the club planned their 2025 calendar.

They found their premier event, he said, as more than 75 PT students from all three cohorts—several helping multiple days— set up the event, packed meals, and cleaned up the event.

Under Kotz’s leadership, Buffalo’s version of Feed My Starving Children food-packing takes place in October, prime time for a PT Month event. And the UB PT students this year shattered all her expectations and helped crush any goal she set for putting meals in the places they’re most needed.

“As a retired PT, I thought the event fit well with PT month,” Kotz said. “Part of PT’s ethics code talks about positively impacting health locally, nationally and globally. As PTs, we impact health locally all the time. And even nationally, if we’re involved in any national organizations. But globally is tough. So, this is a great way to do it.”

The goal this year was 32,000 meals—at a cost of about 29 cents per—packed over a three-day period, Kotz said. Together with other volunteers, UB’s DPT Club helped pack more than 109,000 meals, more than triple the plan.

Next year, Kotz said she hopes to pack 200,000 meals. And she knows exactly where she’ll turn to make it happen.

With Feed My Starving Children, volunteers typically work two-hour shifts packing as many meals as they can while working in teams. Kotz said the atmosphere encourages excitement, with music playing. Progress is constantly updated throughout both shifts and the day.

Excitement may be an understatement, though, Yarbrough said. The event, especially for the UB students, became more competitive than plain fun.

“You yelled and screamed every time you completed a box,” Yarbrough said. “We were flying. We were packing so many bags and boxes. We were going so fast, they actually came and took the boxes from us before we could even scream.”

Yarbrough said she’s proud of how this year’s PT Month turned out. Manning, meanwhile, said he hopes the foundation he helped lay can continue forward. There are plenty more opportunities, including working with the Seneca-Babcock Community Center for pro bono time.

Seils echoes their sentiments, noting that “seeing a true culture of service come alive in our program is something he will never forget. It reflects the character of our students and the heart of our profession. Physical therapy is about more than movement; it is about humanity, compassion, and showing up for others.”

Looking ahead, the PT Club hopes to make this an annual event that continues to grow each year, with a goal of engaging more than 100 PT student volunteers next year. They also hope to involve other UB programs to expand the impact even further.