Hannah Knott, PhD, CCLS

Hannah Knott, MS, CCLS, is originally from Fresno, California, where she met and married her high school sweetheart, Kyle, a special education teacher. She began her journey into the child life profession as a children’s hospital volunteer, then was a student in the MS in Child Life program at the University of La Verne. She completed her internship at Children’s Hospital Orange County before beginning her career as a child life specialist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Knott had the opportunity to establish child life services in the acute pediatric unit and PICU of Community Regional Medical Center, Fresno, and while there she initiated graduate and undergraduate child life practicums, as well as a pediatric family advisory council. She championed the introduction of several nonpharmacological pain management resources to the hospital and collaborated with nursing staff on multidisciplinary education efforts to improve staff approach to pediatric procedures. In her second year at the hospital, she obtained more than $50,000 in grant funding for the pediatric service line and was named the Pediatric Provider of the Year. As a member of the community advisory board for California State University, Fresno’s Child and Family Sciences Department, Knott introduced, designed, and taught the university’s first-ever undergraduate child life course. Her professional interests include preventative strategies to address acute stress disorder and medical PTSD, nonpharmacological pain management, and parenting education.