The transition from high school to adulthood is typically accompanied by student’s prepping and planning for post-secondary education and employment following the completion of their education. Obtaining employment is a key milestone in a young adult’s life and provides the opportunity for earning money, living independently, and actively participating within the community and work environment. Young adults with disabilities (YADs) face numerous barriers when attempting to prepare for and obtain employment. Barriers such as transportation, employer bias, and an individual's interpersonal factors contribute to poorer employment outcomes for YADs when compared to neurotypical same aged peers. Helping Underserved Leaders Transition (HULT) is a school based pre- vocational skills program developed to address poor employment outcomes for YADs. Utilizing a mixed methods research design, HULT derives both qualitative and quantitative data from each program stakeholder including the students, their families and/or caregivers, and the school district administrators assisting with the logistics of the program implementation. Using quantitative data measures such as the use of Likert scales, HULT analyzes several outcomes before and after program participation related to the students’ skills in areas such as level of self-esteem, level of independence while completing vocational tasks, and ability to utilize coping strategies. Pre-vocational training within a school setting provides a dynamic and unique addition to YADs educational experience. HULT in conjunction with community resources and school curriculum allows students to prepare for their future employment endeavors earlier and within an inclusive, client centered environment. HULT demonstrates the importance of pre-vocational skills programming earlier in a student’s education to ensure accessibility and to improve overall employability for YADs.

Children with cancer are living longer than ever before and their care and aftercare in the hospital and school has yet to meet the current standards. Team communication, a consultative program designed by an occupational therapist, is intended to bring together the family, the child, and members of the child with cancer’s interdisciplinary team in the hospital and school settings. This team is responsible for collaboratively developing a plan of care for the child to transition from the hospital to home and school settings. Using the Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT), the interdisciplinary team members will address communication and its relation to the seven axioms of URT, to gain practical skills for collaboration. Through the education and training efforts by an occupational therapist (OT), the interdisciplinary team will learn to use their similarities to relate to one another in a way they had not been able to do before. The consultative program is intended to increase collaboration and communication for the interdisciplinary team (School team, hospital team, caregivers and child) to increase the quality of life (QOL) of the child and their family in their return to school so they may be able to gain academic occupational success physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally in relation to their same-aged peers.

High school students are currently transitioning out of an autism program at the author’s school, without functional life skills This impacts their ability to live independently and reduces their employment opportunities. Life skills are “skills or tasks that contribute to the successful, independent functioning of an individual in adulthood” (Cronin, 1996, p. 54). A review of the literature suggests autistic individuals are at a disadvantage compared to their same-aged peers when attempting to learn life skills. Their struggles with life skills could be partly due to their difficulties with executive functioning, motor skills, or a combination of their executive functioning and motor deficits. Based on a review of the current practices that support and enhance learning for autistic students, while considering the need for support in executive functioning and motor skills, the author proposes an intervention outlined within this doctoral paper. The intervention is a Functional Life Skills Lab that will be offered as an elective class to autistic high school students where the author works. This proposed intervention would provide hands-on training with real-world materials with a multidisciplinary team approach to teach life skills. It would provide opportunities for autistic students to improve their independence by preparing them for meaningful participation in everyday life skills. The author includes a funding plan that will assist in purchasing the necessary items to make the proposed intervention successful. In addition, this doctoral paper provides a comprehensive program evaluation plan highlighting the key stakeholders and a multiple baseline study designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the program.

Strokes can have a devastating effect on the survivor and can often lead to a high level of disability or death. Many survivors experience functional impairments that impact participation and the ability to engage in meaningful occupations and activities of daily living (ADLs). There is a lack of area of treatment within the acute care setting to address the emotional impacts after suffering from a stroke, as the development of post-stroke depression (PSD) and post-stroke anxiety (PSA) is highly prevalent and correlated with poor functional outcomes. Occupational therapy-focused, adapted protocol, Post-Stroke Surviving Trauma (PSST), was designed to decrease depression and anxiety rates and improve overall function. This 6-day consecutive intervention plan is intended for stroke survivors in the acute care setting, with each intervention lasting 30–45 minutes. The foundations of the protocol are based on the posttraumatic growth (PTG) theory, which can enable survivors to focus on embracing new opportunities, improving personal relationships, heightening their sense of gratitude, and appreciating life, forming greater spiritual connections, and increasing emotional strength (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2018). PSST can be used as an additional treatment that can be used to help stroke survivors decrease depression and anxiety and increase functional outcomes with the facilitation of PTG in recovery.

This paper examines the role of occupational therapy in the management of headaches among women in military aviation. Headaches are a common complaint among aviation professions and can significantly impact their performance and their quality of life. Through a comprehensive literature review, this paper highlights the unique challenges faced by women in military aviation fields and the various factors that contribute to the headache experience. This paper explores the benefits of occupational therapy interventions utilizing the biopsychosocial model and the integrated headache model. The interventions are designed to address the musculoskeletal symptoms to include injury remediation and prevention, pain management techniques, manual therapy modalities and ergonomic assessments. Additionally, interventions address behavioral factors that support development of health promoting habits, roles and routines. Interventions may include but are not limited to the management of headache triggers such as sleep and rest, stress management and strategies which impact quality of life and the headache experience. The findings of this paper underscore the importance of occupational therapy in the holistic approach to managing headaches among women in military aviation and it highlights the need for further research in this area.

Two hypotheses have evolved in the literature regarding cerebral specialization in processing intonation contours. One position, the functional hypothesis, suggests that hemispheric lateralization is determined by the linguistic or nonlinguistic function of the intonation contour during sentence processing. The other hypothesis, the parallel hypothesis, states that prosody like music is always processed in the right hemisphere while the left hemisphere simultaneously processes the segmental properties of a sentence. The purpose of this dissertation was to test these hypotheses by systematically manipulating the functions of the intonation contours. Subjects participating in this study included a right hemisphere damaged (RHD) group, a left hemisphere damaged (LHD) group and a control group. Three experiments were designed to manipulate the functions of the intonation contours during sentence processing. Experiment 1 required subjects to categorically assign segmentally neutral sentences as either questions or statements depending upon the perception of the intonation contours. In Experiment 2, subjects listened to syntactically ambiguous sentences that were disambiguated by the locations of the prosodic boundaries and pointed to pictures that corresponded to the sentence meanings. Experiment 3 required subjects to match pairs of sentences from the two aforementioned experiments when segmental information was present (Condition 1) and when it had been removed (Condition 2). Results from this investigation did not support predictions made by either the parallel or functional hypotheses. Contrary to what was expected, both the RHD and LHD groups performed well in Experiments 1 and 3, Condition 1. The RHD group performed better than the LHD group in Experiment 2, although the RHD group did not do as well as expected. In Experiment 3, Condition 2 the RHD group did poorly and the LHD group did well. Although the data appear puzzling in light of predictions made by the functional and parallel hypotheses, another hypothesis is presented as an explanation for the pattern of observed results.

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Sleep and nutrition impact a child’s ability to participate in their daily occupations. Poor sleep has been linked to school-related attention problems and can impair executive function and cognitive control. Poor nutrition is associated with decreased cognitive function, memory, and overall mood. Children are more likely to be able to successfully engage in their occupations, such as school, play, and socialization, when they have adequate nutrition. There are several existing programs to support parents and caregivers of elementary school students with either sleep or nutrition. However, there is a lack of programs that address both sleep and nutrition together. At Home Healthy Habits: Sleep & Nutrition is a six-week virtual educational workshop offered to caregivers of elementary school students. The goals of this program are to increase caregivers’ knowledge about how sleep and nutrition are connected, how sleep and nutrition impact their child at school, and how to promote healthy habits. Addressing sleep and nutritional health through an occupational therapy lens will provide inclusive recommendations and support for all abilities and sensory preferences. Strengthened communication between caregivers and the school can provide a caring and collaborative environment to support students’ health and academic achievement.