About

About Dana K. Hockenbury, MA, CCC-SLP, COM

Dana K. Hockenbury has been working as a IAOM Board Certified Orofacial Myologist® since February 2010.  Her private practice is dedicated to the treatment of Orofacial Myofunctional Disorders.  She completed the intensive course work in orofacial myofunctional therapy in 2007 through the International Association for Orofacial Myology (IAOM) www.iaom.com. She was the first orofacial myologist in Manhattan to hold this advanced certification.  

Dana retired as a Speech and Language Pathologist from the New York City Board of Education in 2015.  For over 25 years, she worked with the elementary school age population treating a variety of disorders including articulation, oral-motor, fluency and receptive and expressive language disorders. Dana is licensed to practice Speech-Language Pathology in the state of New York and Massachusetts.  

Dana completed her undergraduate degree in Communication Disorders at Northeastern University, Boston, MA in 1985 and her Masters in Communication Disorders at Lehman College, NY in 2005.  

She is a member of the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association (ASHA) and is listed in the ASHA directory @www.asha.org.  Dana has received many ACE Awards from ASHA for her participation in many continuing educational conferences, where several were on the topic of oral motor and articulation disorders. 

Dana continues to be an active member of the IAOM. She is currently serving as a member of the Board of Examiners within the IAOM to support and prepare future orofacial myologists. She also served as the Educational Chair from 2012-2018. Dana was Program Committee Chair in 2016, directly developing many IAOM conventions. She served on the Mentoring Committee from 2010-2012. Dana received the prestigious Connie Painter Award in 2018 for Outstanding Service to the IAOM.

In 2017 the IAOM awarded Dana’s poster presentation Using Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy as an Adjunct Treatment Appropach to Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) the Certificate of Excellence. 

In February 2017, Dana’s research Using Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy as an Adjunct Treatment Approach to Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) was published in the EC Dental Science Journal. This research was chosen as “Best Article of the Issue’ in March 2017. 

Dana and her colleagues co-wrote a ground breaking peer-reviewed article The Essential Role of the COM in the Management of Sleep Disordered Breathing published in the International Journal of Orofacial Myology. This was presented as a poster at the 2015 IAOM Convention and earned the Award of Excellence.

At this same conference she was also awarded Honorable Mention for her independent research-based poster CASE STUDY: Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy and Its Related Benefits.

Dana, along with her colleague Danni Gomes, RDH developed MYO Central, a website dedicated to support Orofacial Myologists both nationally and internationally, launched 2015.  

She actively participates across the nation in advanced course work offered by other related groups such as the AAPMD, the AAMS and the IATP.  Dana is LinkedIn!  www.linkedin.com and also found on FaceBook.  

Dana worked in a variety of settings including public schools, private residential rehabilitation centers and TBI centers.   

In 1990 she founded and is president of the active Washington Heights Gardening Crew in Upper Manhattan.  She is an active cyclist and outdoors enthusiast.