AOTA Urges NIH to Support Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation Research
AOTA is continuing its ongoing efforts to advocate for occupational therapy (OT) and rehabilitation research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by encouraging key officials at specific Institutes to engage in such research, and by encouraging the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research (NCMRR) to continue its researcher infrastructure support. As part of this effort, AOTA member researchers met this summer with officials at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), along with advocates from the Disability and Rehabilitation Research Coalition (DRRC) to discuss issues specific to those Institutes. AOTA also submitted formal comments to NCMRR encouraging the continuation of its researcher support program.
The occupational therapy profession was initially founded, in part, to address the mental health challenges of returning World War I veterans, and occupational therapy practitioners continue to provide important services in this setting. Juleen Rodakowski, OTD, MS, OTR/L, FAOTA, from the University of Pittsburgh, represented AOTA at NIMH and noted that “the NIMH program officials indicated an openness to support rehabilitation research that focuses on individuals with disabilities— an area of science that they want to enhance in their portfolios.” She added that “they also indicated that when developing research proposals, scientists need not be as rigid as one might think with NIMH’s request for an inclusion of multiple levels of analysis with their research domain criteria. They encourage a consideration of the environment and social determinants of health, which align well with our expertise in rehabilitation science.”
Andrew Persch, PhD, OTR/L, BCP, Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy at Colorado State University, represented AOTA at the NIMHD meeting and noted that “people with disabilities face some of the greatest challenges when accessing health care, employment, and community services. It is encouraging that Director Perez-Stable acknowledged these disparities and supports efforts to examine and mitigate them.” Persch added that, “in the short term, NIMHD may support jointly sponsored funding opportunity announcements (FOA) for rehabilitation research that emphasizes disparities experienced by people with disabilities. With time, NIMHD will assess whether or not to grant ‘disparity designation’ to the populations of people with disabilities.”
Similar meetings were held in the past with officials from the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR); National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH); National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD); the National Cancer Institute (NCI); National Institute on Aging (NIA); and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). Meetings have also been held with directors of NCMRR and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), which already focus on rehabilitation and disability research.
AOTA Encourages NIH to Continue Rehab Researcher Support Program
AOTA also filed comments with NCMRR in response to a request for input from researchers regarding the value of the Center’s rehabilitation research infrastructure support. AOTA reported that OT researchers value NIH’s formal support efforts, especially younger OT scientists who are at an early stage in their research careers. AOTA singled out the Learning Health Systems Rehabilitation Research Network (LeaRRn) program as being especially helpful for OT researchers, while suggesting that NIH’s infrastructure support efforts continue to focus on the current methodological needs of young OT scientists in the areas of intervention design and testing, clinical trials (particularly hybrid designs focused on efficacy and pre-implementation methods), measure development, technology development and transfer, learning health systems and implementation science, stakeholder engagement, and other research elements.