California State University Dominguez Hills O&P Program
For more than 40 years, our O&P program has offered educational excellence and local community service in a field that is distressingly small. The allied health practitioners who are specifically educated and clinically trained at CSUDH directly serve veterans and the general population who require prostheses or orthoses.
Operating out of a 12,000 square-foot facility in Los Alamitos (13 miles away from main campus) replete with advanced assessment tools, gait analysis equipment, 3D printers, scanners and carvers utilizing space-age materials (i.e. carbon fiber laminations, titanium components, custom silicone fabrication, and thermoplastic vacuum forming), the O&P program serves over 150 miles covering Ventura, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego counties.
Students gain extensive hands-on experience, seeing patients from evaluation to delivery while under direct supervision of experienced faculty. Their patient care skills are enhanced with rotations into clinics such as Veteran’s Administration Medical Centers in Long Beach and Los Angeles, Hanger’s major central fabrication facility, Rancho Los Amigos Rehabilitation Center, and Balboa Naval Medical Center’s C-5 program in San Diego where wounded soldiers receive medical treatment.
Master’s students work with real patients to help people live to the fullest. Patients served include veterans returning from war and other individuals (i.e. post stroke, spinal issues, geriatrics, pediatrics, and animals) who have lost body parts due to accidents, illness, and disease.
In keeping with CSUDH’s commitment to community service, students also participate in local adaptive sports events, community health awareness campaigns and are active to help fulfill the needs of the local population, such as creating bamboo feet.
Since its inception, the O&P program has graduated nearly 1,200 clinicians, reflecting CSUDH’s significant contribution to the field.
The prominence of Toros in the profession can be seen across the U.S. in O&P clinics, hospitals, and practices. In fact, there are CSUDH alumni in every Department of Defense facility in the country.
With an annual cohort size of 30 Masters of Science students, a projected 25 O&P Assistants, 15 O&P Technicians, and our offerings in continuing education, the program is will continue to add a significant number O&P specialists to the workforce in both the state and the region.
Over the long term, the O&P program will expand to include high school and undergraduate programs, create a pro-bono community clinic, and create an adaptive sports and physical activity complex.