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Heakyung Kim, MD (she/her/hers)

Department Chair
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Heakyung Kim, MD serves as Professor and Chair of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Chair in Mobility Research at the University of Texas Southwestern (UTSW) Medical Center in Dallas, Texas in the United States of America. Dr. Kim joined UTSW. She is a board-certified physiatrist in the USA and South Korea and holds subspecialty boards in Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine and Brain Injury Medicine.
Dr. Kim has been recognized as one of “America’s Top Doctors” as well as “Super Doctor” by New York Times and selected as one of Exceptional Women in Medicine and Best of the Best (Top 1% of America’s Most Honored Doctors) by American Registry. She has been an outstanding teacher and mentor and received “Teacher of the Year” awards 4 times.

She is nationally and internationally regarded as an expert in pediatric rehabilitation medicine, especially care for people with cerebral palsy including pain and spasticity management and botulinum toxin injections to salivary glands. She is also renowned sonographer for muscles and nerves. She specializes in single event multilevel chemoneurolysis with botulinum toxin and phenol/alcohol injections, botulinum toxin injections to salivary glands, and sexuality and pain management in children and adults with cerebral palsy. Her research interests focus on people with CP, especially spasticity and drooling management with botulinum toxin, robotic therapy and exercise for spastic muscles in children with cerebral palsy and lifespan care for people with cerebral palsy including sexuality. She is a WHO member of development group to prepare a package of rehabilitation intervention for people with CP. She has been selected as Chair of Global Academic Physiatry Subcommittee (GAPS) of Association of Academic Physiatrists (AAP) since 2023 to address the global needs of physiatry training, especially with respect to developing nations.

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