Community-based OT

In our OT work with individuals, there can be a feeling of futility.

As there is a growing collective consciousness around what we, as OT professionals, experience day in and day out:

The communities in which we live have such a profound impact on our health. 

And, we can fail individuals by focusing only on their individual choices—and not the larger driving forces of their lives. 

I think this expanding view of health is why we see so much interest in community practice from students, new grads, and tired clinicians. Community practice does have a long history in occupational therapy, but currently very few clinicians find full-time work in this practice area. The authors of this course’s featured article, believe this may be in part to a lack of frameworks for community-based OT.

So, today we’ll explore the framework they put forth and their call to “reimagine occupational therapy clients as communities.” Then, we will welcome Ryan Lavalley, PhD, OTR/L. Dr. Lavalley is the founder and primary lead of the Community Practice Lab at UNC School of Medicine.

1. You will be able to identify the intervention tools that OTs can utilize both with individuals and communities.

2. You will be able to recognize how outcomes differ in OT community practice from individual practice.

• Intro and breakdown and analysis of journal article

  • Intro

  • Intro to OT’s role in community

  • Why the focus on community practice now?

  • What has already been written about community practice OT?

  • What was the intent of this paper?

  • What were their methods?

  • Presenting the Community Practice Framework

  • Intro to Ryan Lavalley

• Discussion on practical implications for OTs

  1. How did you became interested in community-based OT?

  2. What is the community practice lab?

  3. What other community practice jobs exist?

  4. Why should all OTs be thinking about the community-level?

  5. What were your impressions of the journal article?

  6. How do you describe community-based OT?

  7. What are the magic tools that community practice OTs bring to the table?

  8. What future full-time jobs do you see for community-based OTs?

Primary

• Re-imagining occupational therapy clients as communities: Presenting the community-centred practice framework

Additional

• The Effectiveness of Community Occupational Therapy Interventions: A Scoping Review

• An overview of occupational therapy community practices in Latin America

It is the policy of OT Potential to disclose any financial and non-financial interest the provider or instructor may have in a product or service mentioned during an activity. This is to ensure that the audience is made aware of any bias of the speaker.

OT Potential pays guest speakers an honorarium for their participation, either directly or to an institution of the speaker's choosing at their request. We invite guests whose expertise often comes from practices, programs, or building products in their field. Where a speaker has a financial interest in the subject of a course, we disclose it below so you can weigh it for yourself.

OT Potential's interest in this topic: We have no financial stake in this topic.

Speaker interests: Ryan Lavalley has no financial interest in this topic to disclose.