Specialty Areas:
Back and neck pain, nonoperative musculoskeletal and peripheral nerve injury

Board Certification:
Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (Physiatry)
Pain Medicine, Sports Medicine

Medical Licenses:
Connecticut, New York

For Dr. Daniel Southern, becoming a physician began, ironically enough, by refusing to follow the treatments that doctors recommended for his back pain, including bracing, pain medications, and retiring from performing as a professional dancer.  He spent years discovering alternative treatments – including relative rest, stretching, proper diet, smoking cessation, chiropractic, and acupuncture – that allowed him to learn to live with and not be limited by back pain.  While traveling in Europe, he discovered a particular type of pain specialist who seemed to have an intuitive understanding of pain and its biomechanical as well as emotional nature and later learned that they were doctors of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Dr. Southern is now board certified in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (Physiatry) with additional board certifications in Pain Medicine and Sports Medicine.  He employs minimally invasive procedures along with physical therapy and complementary/alternative medicine techniques to treat neck, back, and joint pain.  Dr Southern is fellowship trained to treat pre- and postsurgical pain, acute traumatic pain, chronic pain, and spinal pain using advanced conservative care procedures, including epidural injections, diagnostic joint and nerve blocks, radiofrequency denervation, platelet-rich-plasma (PRP) injections, and spinal neuromodulation.  The aim of back and neck injury rehabilitation is to restore, maintain, and increase appropriate functional level to enable patients of all ages to achieve their goals of participation and independence.

Fellowship & Graduate Training:

• Fellow: Spine and Sports, Department of Physiatry, Hospital for Special Surgery; New York, NY
• Resident: Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, New York Presbyterian Medical Center; New York, NY
• Intern: St. Barnabas Medical Center; Livingston, NJ

Education:

• Doctor of Medicine, State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn; Brooklyn, NY
• Post-Baccalaureate, City University of New York/Hunter College; New York, NY

• Bachelor of Arts in Dramatic Arts with honors, University of California Berkeley; Berkeley, CA