(Adobe Stock)

By Sammy Bovitz

According to a new randomized study of primary care patients with diabetes, patients who received Lifestyle Redesign® occupational therapy generated more than $250,000 in health care cost savings compared to patients who received usual care alone. Researchers compared health care utilization and costs for both groups during the year before and the year after Lifestyle Redesign services began. Those savings were driven by significant decreases in emergency department visits and hospital days among patients who participated in Lifestyle Redesign, compared to those who did not.

The researchers’ cost–benefit projection of integrating a full-time Lifestyle Redesign-certified occupational therapist within a primary care clinic is more than $350,000 — a 236 percent return on investment on the clinician’s salary and benefits. Identifying ways to reduce per capita costs while continuing to deliver high-quality care — and having the research evidence to support those approaches — is an overarching goal across the American health care system.

“From a health system or health payer perspective, having OT practitioners certified in Lifestyle Redesign makes financial sense because it saves money,” said Steven Fox, assistant research professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics at the USC Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. “It does so by helping patients with diabetes improve their health focus and their health outcomes, reducing how often they need care in the emergency room or hospital. It does appear to increase their use of primary care services, but those are far less costly than emergency room care and hospitalization.”

Results of the study, led by occupational science doctoral student Valerie Tapia PhD ’27 and a team from the USC Chan Division’s Lifestyle Redesign for Chronic Conditions research lab directed by Associate Professor Beth Pyatak, were recently published in the Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy.

“We all want our patients to enjoy improved health and better health outcomes, but for patients with diabetes, the trajectory with usual care is too often in the wrong direction,” Fox said. “Reversing that with effective interventions such as Lifestyle Redesign not only pays dividends in the short term by averting some expensive acute care, but likely also saves more money in the long term by delaying or preventing serious, and very costly, end-stage events such as renal failure and severe heart disease.”

More than a money-saver

Study participants had access to usual care, and those assigned to receive the Lifestyle Redesign intervention were also offered up to eight, one-hour sessions of Lifestyle Redesign. During those face-to-face Lifestyle Redesign sessions, held every 2 to 3 weeks, the occupational therapist and patient worked together through the process of setting client-specific goals, identifying practical strategies to increase autonomy, and reviewing knowledge and skills to better incorporate diabetes self-care activities and healthy lifestyle choices into daily routines.

The study shows occupational therapy is more than a money-saver — it’s the bedrock of more effective and efficient care.

“Lifestyle modifications are the foundation for treating many health conditions, including conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol,” said David Ho, medical director for primary care Adult West at Los Angeles General Medical Center.

While occupational therapists are well positioned for supporting patients to modify lifestyle choices and daily routines, this study shows that Lifestyle Redesign-certified occupational therapists in particular can enhance primary care clinics’ capacity to help patients independently and cost-effectively address their chronic care needs.

Ho says his clinical team knows and appreciates the impact that OTs make on holistic, comprehensive primary care.

“Having occupational therapists with Lifestyle Redesign certifications in our clinic has significantly enhanced our ability to support our patients who have chronic illnesses,” Ho said. “Patients are more confident in managing their health conditions, and have expressed their deep gratitude for the support they were provided by OT.”

Learn more about Lifestyle Redesign certification at chan.usc.edu/lifestyleredesign/certification. “Primary Care Lifestyle Redesign® Clinical Trial: Diabetes Outcomes, Healthcare Utilization, and Costs” was supported by the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute through the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (UL1TR001855).

Not only is Lifestyle Redesign® beneficial for patients, it also helps reduce the cost of care. The program has been estimated to save over $250,000 in healthcare costs, as a previously spotlighted study found.

Patients who received Lifestyle Redesign care for diabetes in the study were found to have significant decreases in total emergency department visits and overall hospital days, which accounted for the majority of healthcare cost savings. In an interview with Dr. Steven Fox, MD, research assistant professor of pharmaceutical and health economics at the USC Mann School of Pharmacy and Schaeffer Center for Health Economics, outlined how providing Lifestyle Redesign to patients with diabetes saves money — and quickly.

“From a health system or health payer perspective, having OT practitioners certified in Lifestyle Redesign makes financial sense because it saves money,” Dr. Fox said. “It does so by helping patients with diabetes improve their health focus, and their health outcomes, reducing how often they need care in the emergency room or hospital. It does appear to increase their use of primary care services, but those are far less costly than emergency room care and hospitalization.”

According to the CDC, diabetes is the most expensive chronic condition to have in the United States, and one of the most common: estimates show that about 1 in 3 Americans develop diabetes in their lifetime. This leads to an estimated $1 out of every $4 in US healthcare costs being spent on diabetes-related care, a huge expense that Lifestyle Redesign successfully aims to bring down.

Occupational therapy isn’t simply a money-saver, however: it also forms the bedrock of better, more efficient care overall. Dr. David Ho, MD, Primary Care Adult West medical director at the Los Angeles General Medical Center, explains.

“Lifestyle modifications are the foundation for treating many health conditions, including conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol,” Dr. Ho said.

One of the best ways to get these lifestyle modifications to patients is through occupational therapists. By equipping those therapists with Lifestyle Redesign certification, medical centers greatly enhance their ability to work with patients in a manner that allows them to manage their health conditions more independently. This increases both short-term financial efficiency and long-term health efficacy.

“We all want our patients to enjoy improved health, and better health outcomes, but for patients with diabetes, the trajectory with usual care is too often in the wrong direction,” Dr. Fox said. “Reversing that with effective interventions such as Lifestyle Redesign not only pays dividends in the short term, by averting some expensive acute care, but likely also saves more money later, by delaying or preventing serious, and very costly end-stage events, such as renal failure and severe heart disease.”

In Dr. Ho’s clinic, his team has already taken notice of the Lifestyle Redesign-trained staff they employ – and not just for the sake of their patients’ wallets, but for their quality of care.

“Having occupational therapists (OTs) with Lifestyle Redesign certification in our clinic has significantly enhanced our ability to support our patients who have chronic illnesses,” Dr. Ho said. “Patients who have worked with Lifestyle Redesign OTs are more confident in managing their health conditions and have expressed deep gratitude for the support they were provided by OT.”

If someone you know is looking to save money and reduce hospitalizations at their medical center, consider sending them to the Lifestyle Redesign website, where they can learn more about the numerous, research-backed benefits of Lifestyle Redesign occupational therapy.

Karla Ausderau (courtesy of Karla Ausderau)

Karla Ausderau MA ’00, PhD ’09, whose scholarship focuses on developmental science, neuroscience, occupational science and community engagement and knowledge mobilization approaches, has joined the faculty of the USC Chan Division at the rank of professor. She returns to USC after 14 years at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she was the director of graduate studies for kinesiology, and investigator at the Waisman Center with an appointment at the Wisconsin Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities.

She previously completed postdoctoral training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, after earning her Master of Arts degree in occupational therapy and PhD degree in occupational science from USC Chan.

“Returning to USC Chan feels like coming home,” Ausderau said. “The division played an important role in my development as a scholar and occupational therapist, and I’m excited to contribute to its next chapter. As we continue to expand community-engaged research and knowledge mobilization, I look forward to working alongside faculty, students and community partners to build meaningful collaborations that translate research into real-world impact.”

Community-engaged scholarship

Ausderau is the principal investigator of a nearly $7.3 million grant from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute comparing the clinical effectiveness of a group psychoeducational intervention with individual health coaching embedded in Special Olympics programming against standard Special Olympics Sport and Health programming. The study’s ultimate aim is to improve access to high quality community health care for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, a population that experiences higher rates of chronic health conditions and comorbidities than the general population. This is her third PCORI grant and fifth extramurally-funded study on inclusive, community-centered interventions.

Additionally, she is a multi-principal investigator on an NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant investigating the sensorimotor neurodevelopment impacts of prenatal exposure to Zika virus.

Ausderau will serve as USC Chan’s inaugural director of community-engaged research and knowledge mobilization. That role will include developing a division-wide strategy to support and sustain USC Chan’s expanding portfolio of community-engaged research partnerships.

“Dr. Ausderau’s research is truly translational — she has shaped occupational therapy practice and education, advanced our understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms that shape participation and health trajectories, developed community engagement practices, and enhanced equitable health and participation outcomes for those with developmental disabilities,” said Associate Dean and Chair Grace Baranek. “We look forward to having a front row seat to her innovative work and impactful contributions.”

Millions of Americans rely on rehabilitation care to maintain health and independence, yet the pipeline of scientists driving advances in treatment remains limited. A new nationwide program led by the University of Florida and the University of Southern California will provide early career researchers with the training, mentoring and resources they need to become independent investigators and scientific leaders in rehabilitation.

The K12 Career Advancement and Development in Rehabilitation Research, or CADRRE, program is designed to build a national training network for early career faculty in occupational therapy and physical therapy. The program is funded by a grant from the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development with institutional support from UF and USC.

“The overall goal of the CADRRE program is to train leaders who will enable a sustainable and cutting-edge rehabilitation science infrastructure in the United States,” said CADRRE director Krista Vandenborne, Ph.D., P.T., distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Physical Therapy at the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions. “A highly trained workforce in rehabilitation science is fundamentally important to advance treatments and improve the lives of our citizens.”

CADRRE builds on a successful program the two institutions co-directed for 17 years that trained more than 40 scholars and helped launch their careers as leading investigators who have had an exceptional track record of securing research funding from federal agencies, foundations and industry sources.

“CADRRE will undoubtedly accelerate the quality, capacity and impact of research produced by our junior scientists,” said Grace Baranek, Ph.D., OTR/L, FAOTA, CADRRE co-director and associate dean and chair of the USC Mrs. T.H. Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. “Investing in K12 trainees will yield long-term benefits for the OT and PT professions, our educational institutions and the general public throughout the nation.”

CADRRE expands the previous model to include 16 partner institutions across the U.S. from which excellent candidates will be recruited to broaden the program’s impact.

Each scholar will be matched with one of 50 lead mentors at UF or USC as well as a local mentor if they are at one of the partner institutions. The program will emphasize four major research themes that reflect UF and USC’s areas of excellence and represent national public health priorities. These include:

• Rehabilitation neuroscience
• Pediatrics and neuromuscular developmental disorders
• Musculoskeletal structure and function in health and disease
• Aging and chronic conditions, including health services and community participation

Scholars will begin by preparing an individualized career development plan under the guidance of their lead mentor. Program features also include comprehensive education in clinical and translational research; training in clinical trials and intervention research; access to cutting-edge research methods and infrastructure, including the use of artificial intelligence in rehabilitation research; intensive training and mentoring in grant writing; and networking and career development opportunities. Scholars will also be integrated into an interdisciplinary research team at one of the lead or partner institutions to provide further guidance on generating, analyzing, presenting and publishing research data, helping scholars gain the expertise and credentials needed to compete for external research funding.

In addition to Vandenborne and Baranek, members of the CADRRE executive committee include Mark Bishop, Ph.D., P.T., Sherrilene Classen, Ph.D., OTR/L, and David Fuller, Ph.D., of the University of Florida, and Christopher Powers, Ph.D., P.T., of the University of Southern California.

“The UF and USC PT and OT faculty are national leaders in rehabilitation science,” said Fuller, CADRRE’s career development officer. “The CADRRE program pairs these experts with clinicians seeking to advance their ability to do high level research, providing a powerful platform to grow a research career. By strengthening the rehabilitation science workforce, the program will lead to new discoveries that ultimately benefit the health of all Americans.”

Applications are open for the first cohort of CADRRE scholars. Applicants should have earned a doctoral degree in a relevant field and completed their postdoctoral training within the past three years. Visit the program website for more information and to apply.

Faculty and colleagues gathered at an April luncheon symposium to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the USC Chan China Initiative, a collaboration which has successfully advanced occupational therapy’s professional status, educational standards and workforce capacity in mainland China.

The China Initiative partnership was formally established by a 2016 memorandum of understanding between the USC Mrs. T.H. Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy and Peking University Health Science Center (PKUHSC). During the ensuing decade, the initiative has contributed to significant advancements in professional training, clinical standards and research development across China.

The faculty teams from USC and PKUHSC have together made more than a dozen site visits back and forth across the Pacific, and given numerous presentations and keynote lectures. Fifteen students earned clinical doctorate degrees in occupational therapy through the initiative’s dual-degree program, while two students have completed or are nearing completion of the PhD degree in occupational science.

China Initiative director Julie McLaughlin Gray, associate chair for academic, faculty and student affairs at the USC Chan Division, underscored the collaboration’s impact.

“Over the past 10 years, this partnership has demonstrated the transformative potential of sustained international collaboration grounded in a shared commitment to excellence in education, innovation and patient-centered care,” Gray said. “Together, we have developed programs to not only prepare highly skilled occupational therapists, but to also contribute to strengthening health care systems and improving quality of life for individuals and communities.”

The symposium’s program included remarks from USC Lifetime Trustee Ronnie C. Chan, whose landmark $20 million gift to USC set the initiative in motion. Chan gave remarks, followed by a panel discussion among affiliated faculty and presentations from China Initiative faculty and alumni. Topics included the initiative’s evolution, current projects and the team’s approach to cross-cultural curriculum development, clinical care and research projects.

USC leaders who spoke included Steven Shapiro, senior vice president for health affairs; Yang Chai, dean of the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC; and Anthony Bailey, vice president for global and online initiatives.

PKUHSC Vice President Yida Tang, who is also vice president of Peking University Third Hospital and chief of the Department of Cardiology and the Institute of Vascular Medicine, also gave remarks. The current and previous presidents of the China Occupational Therapy Association, who have both been integral partners in many China Initiative projects, were in attendance.

Additional speakers highlighted how the China Initiative supported occupational therapy’s continued maturation in China, citing milestones such as the World Federation of Occupational Therapists’ 2018 vote to grant China full membership in WFOT; the 2020 adoption of educational accreditation standards specific to the Chinese context; and the 2023 approval by the Chinese Ministry of Education to designate rehabilitation therapy programs as professional, rather than academic, educational programs.

Looking to the decade ahead, Gray emphasized the value in continued collaboration between USC and PKUHSC.

“The China Initiative has facilitated the emergence of occupational therapy as a vital and increasingly recognized profession in China,” she said. “It’s exciting to celebrate a decade of this incredible partnership, and perhaps even more exciting to imagine what the future may have in store.”

Celebrating 10 Years of the China Initiative | 4m 49s

In 2026, we celebrate the accomplishments of the China Initiative and its impacts on education, innovation and patient-centered care.

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Photos from the China Initiative 10-Year Celebration
Sunday, April 26, 2026

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Leaders, advocates and alums were lauded during an awards ceremony at the Hilton Anaheim hotel, capping off the annual conference of the American Occupational Therapy Association. The evening brought together more than 500 members of the USC Trojan Family — faculty, students, alumni, colleagues and community partners — to highlight the division’s continued impact on occupational therapy education, research and practice.

Associate Dean and Chair Grace Baranek kicked off the festivities, followed by Dean Yang Chai of the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC who emphasized the division’s top-ranked occupational therapy educational ranking and its vital role in improving how people function and participate in daily life.

Madison Harris ’16, MA ’17, OTD ’18 received the Alumni Award in recognition for her work at UCLA’s BrainSPORT program, where she provides occupational therapy services to children, athletes and veterans with brain injury and concussion.

The Primary Care Adult West clinic at LA General Medical Center received the Community Partnership Award in recognition of the clinic’s longstanding collaboration with USC Chan on delivering and researching Lifestyle Redesign® interventions for patients with type 2 diabetes.

Michael R. Sugar received the Advocacy and Occupational Justice Award for his decades of advocacy, inside and outside the classroom, amplifying the stories and voices of individuals with HIV/AIDS.

Rosemond Seligson received the Fieldwork Educator Award for her mentorship of USC students in nontraditional practice settings. [See related story about Seligson].

University President Beong-Soo Kim — wearing an “I Heart OT” pin on his lapel — presented the Global Visionary Impact Award to alum and Lifetime Trustee Ronnie C. Chan. Chan’s philanthropic leadership, including a landmark $20 million endowment gift to USC, has accelerated the growth and professional status of occupational therapy in China through the USC Chan China Initiative.

The event concluded with the presentation of the Lifetime Achievement Award to Professor Emeritus Florence Clark, a pioneering scholar and co-founder of occupational science who helped shape the discipline, led major research initiatives and mentored generations of students, educators and researchers.

The renowned USC Trojan Marching Band closed out the program with a pop-up performance that had the entire ballroom on their feet waving the USC “Fight On!” gesture.

Photos from the 2026 USC Chan Awards Ceremony
Saturday, April 25, 2026

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The USC Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy is ranked the nation’s No. 1 occupational therapy educational program, according to 2026 Best Graduate Schools compiled by U.S. News & World Report. The recognition affirms the division’s innovation and excellence across its educational, research and clinical practice mission areas.

“Across the landscape of occupational therapy higher education, no other place has the scope and scale we have here at USC Chan,” said Associate Dean and Chair Grace Baranek. “It’s gratifying to have the incredible talent and steadfast dedication of our faculty, staff and students recognized by U.S. News.”

U.S. News ranks accredited occupational therapy programs using peer assessments solicited from academic leaders across the country, a reflection of the high regard in which USC Chan is held among the occupational therapy community. Since U.S. News began ranking OT programs in 1998, USC Chan has held the top spot for 19 years, longer than any other program in the country. Also atop this year’s rankings are Boston University, Colorado State University and the University of Pittsburgh.

USC Chan faculty currently hold more than $37 million of federal research grants. More than four dozen clinical faculty members treat patients at 10 sites of service across the Greater Los Angeles area, including the Keck Medicine of USC hospitals and clinics, at the USC Occupational Therapy Faculty Practice locations, at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles-affiliated sites and out in the community.

By Mike McNulty

AI systems have made remarkable progress in recent years. Multimodal large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini can analyze images, videos and text to describe scenes, answer complex questions and generate realistic content.

Yet despite these advances, they still fail at relatively straightforward tasks that most humans find effortless. Perhaps that’s because MLLMs are fundamentally limited by the very thing they don’t actually have: a physical, functional, neurobiological body.

A new paper published today in Neuron by researchers from USC, the University of California, Los Angeles and Google’s DeepMind research lab outlines why today’s “disembodied” AI systems seemingly struggle when prompted with tasks requiring real-world understandings. The authors then explain why tomorrow’s AI systems must incorporate an “embodied” framework modeled on the ways human beings actually engage in and with the world around them.

“A longstanding paradox in AI is that systems excel at tasks that humans find difficult, but are stumped by the most basic tasks that humans find easy,” said lead author Akila Kadambi.

For example, humans can easily recognize a cluster of moving dots that represents a person’s walking gait. But AI systems struggle with this task, erroneously identifying the dots as constellations, for example.

“Despite their tremendous processing speed and pattern-matching capabilities, this paradox illustrates that AI does not truly understand the real world because it does not experience the real world,” Kadambi said.

Kadambi is a postdoctoral researcher in the USC Brain and Creativity Institute’s Center for the Neuroscience of Embodied Cognition under the direction of USC Chan Professor Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, and at the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in the David Geffen School of Medicine. She is also a research fellow at the UCLA-CDU Dana Center.

At the foundation of the human experience is embodiment — the continuous communication and feedback loops between brain, body and environment that not only maintain physiological homeostasis but enable our brains to regulate, integrate and modulate information to carry out action through three-dimensional space. Therefore, human learning depends upon both external sensory information and internal bodily signals that help us make decisions, understand others and interpret social situations. Even simple interactions, according to Kadambi, depend upon this innate sense of “internal” embodiment.

“When a dinner guest asks you ‘Where is the salt?,’ your brain does far more than just parse language,” Kadambi said. “You subconsciously interpret their motivations, locate your body position within the environment, plan your hand’s physical action sequences and respond in context.”

In contrast, today’s AI architecture treats the salt question as a statistical pattern-matching problem. Answers are generated by optimizing probabilities of the correct external response without any underlying internal sense of empathy, relationship or intention. The authors argue this lack of internal embodiment limits AI’s capacity to reason about space, actions and social situations in ways humans can.

More Human-Like AI Will Be Safer AI

In their paper, the neuroscientists argue that future AI architecture and algorithms must go beyond linguistic descriptions of internal embodiment via engineering that actually accounts for concepts like uncertainty, social connectivity and resource tradeoffs. Rather than behave unpredictably in unfamiliar contexts or confidently generate false responses, a stronger sense of internal embodiment will help AI adapt more effectively to complex and ambiguous situations, and defer answers or seek more information instead of making the best (but wrong) guess.

The authors also emphasize that the future of embodied AI does not require a replication of human neurobiology. Instead, better simulation of the regulatory roles that internal states play in human reasoning and behavior will make AI more grounded, adaptable and aligned with real-world conditions.

Perhaps most importantly, they argue that AI with internal embodiment will ultimately be safer.

“Today’s AI systems have no built-in costs or disincentives,” Kadambi said. “But in biological systems, survival depends on maintaining internal stability and estimating risks to the individual and to the population, both of which naturally constrain behavior.”

The authors believe that embedding similar mechanisms into AI will serve as guardrails that prioritize empathic, prosocial responses over risky, antisocial ones.

As AI becomes increasingly integrated into daily life, the call is growing for more ethical, benevolent and human-centric behaviors. For artificial intelligence to better reflect human intelligence, according to Kadambi, it will need the very type of intelligence that, for now, only seems to be located within the human body.

“Embodiment may be what bridges that gap between raw processing power and more meaningful understanding.”

Article co-authors with Kadambi and Aziz-Zadeh are Antonio Damasio (USC Brain and Creativity Institute), Marco Iacoboni (Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center at UCLA) and Srini Narayanan (Google DeepMind). Their publication was supported in part by a Google Faculty Research Award titled “AI Tropes and the Human Mind: A Neuroscience Perspective” (PI: L. Aziz-Zadeh).

2026 Commencement keynote speaker Dr. Arameh Anvarizadeh

Arameh Anvarizadeh ’05, MA ’06, OTD ’07, will be the keynote speaker at the USC Chan Division’s 2026 Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 15, 2026, at the University Park Campus.

Anvarizadeh became president of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), the national professional association representing the interests of occupational therapy practitioners, in July 2025. She has previously served AOTA in the roles of vice president, chair of the Credential Review and Accountability Committee (CRAC), as a member of the Representative Assembly Leadership Committee (RALC), as a member of the Governance Task Force and as a member of the Special Task Force on Entry-Level Education.

She is a founding member of the Coalition of Occupational Therapy Advocates for Diversity (COTAD), responsible for developing the COTAD toolkit, the Ignite Series and COTAD chapters at educational institutions. She is also an alumna of the Executive Leadership Program for Multicultural Women.

Treasurer to the Board of Directors
Bryant Edwards MA ’05, OTD ’06

Chair, Academic Fieldwork Coordinators—Academic Leadership Council
Kathryn Sorensen MA ’06, OTD ’16

Chair, Developmental Disabilities Special Interest Section
Lisa Test MA ’89, OTD ’09

Chair, Sensory Integration & Processing Special Interest Section
Kelly Auld-Wright MA ’07

California #2 Representative to the Representative Assembly
Carlin Reaume MA ’06, OTD ’07

Chair, OTAs—Academic Leadership Council
Vicky Vu MA ’95

OT Vice Chair, Assembly of Student Delegates
Taylor Kamemoto OTD ’26

Student Representative to the Representative Assembly
Ariyana Griffin OTD ’28

Voting in the annual elections of the American Occupational Therapy Association is now open! This year’s ballot includes 12 USC Trojan Family members — faculty, alums and students — seeking volunteer leadership positions. Consider these Trojans when casting your votes by the Feb. 25 (8:59 a.m. Pacific time) deadline. Fight On!

Director to the Board of Directors
Susan Lingelbach MA ’13

Treasurer to the Board of Directors
Bryant Edwards MA ’05, OTD ’06
Thomas Mernar PhD ’08

Chair, Academic Fieldwork Coordinators—Academic Leadership Council
Kathryn Sorensen MA ’06, OTD ’16

Chair, Developmental Disabilities Special Interest Section
Lisa Test MA ’89, OTD ’09

Chair, Sensory Integration & Processing Special Interest Section
Kelly Auld-Wright MA ’07

California #2 Representative to the Representative Assembly
Jess Holguin ’96, MA ’05, OTD ’11, associate professor of clinical occupational therapy
Carlin Reaume MA ’06, OTD ’07

Chair, OTAs—Academic Leadership Council
Vicky Vu MA ’95

OT Vice Chair, Assembly of Student Delegates
Taylor Kamemoto OTD ’26

Student Representative to the Representative Assembly
Andrea Botello OTD ’27
Ariyana Griffin OTD ’28

The International Congress is held every four years and brings together occupational therapists, assistants and students from across the globe to develop professional fellowship, exchange technical and scientific information and promote high standards of occupational therapy practice, research and education worldwide.

สู้ต่อไปนะ [sûu dtàaw bpai ná]! Fight On!

A new USC-led study will apply artificial intelligence tools to electronic health records (EHRs) in order to better understand how social determinants of health — non-medical factors impacting health, such as education, income, housing and neighborhood resources like grocery stores and transportation access — are related to mental health of autistic children and teens.

Social determinants of health account for up to 50 percent of health outcomes, yet they are mostly unstudied in autism research, which has traditionally focused on racial and ethnic variables for understanding care disparities. That limitation is especially problematic because autistic children and youth, compared to neurotypical populations, have disproportionately higher rates and frequencies of psychiatric care, such as hospital stays and emergency room visits. That suggests their mental health care needs were not adequately managed at lower levels of care, like primary care or psychiatry.

Using an AI method known as natural language processing, the research team will flag and extract keywords and phrases from anonymized clinical notes already stored within the EHR systems at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the University of Florida Health System. Then, using another AI approach called machine learning, the researchers will develop a model for predicting which social determinants pose relatively higher mental health risks, and for whom. That type of individualized risk assessment will empower clinicians and health systems to customize the mental health care and resources they offer to autistic patients.

The study is funded by a $3.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health.

“We know there is valuable data about the social and contextual drivers of mental health hidden in plain sight within patient records,” said Assistant Professor Amber Angell, the study’s principal investigator. Angell holds a joint appointment in the Department of Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

“By using AI to analyze large datasets of clinical records, we will use an existing resource to gain an evidence-based understanding of what social determinants protect autistic people’s mental health, and what increases vulnerability,” Angell said. “That will help individuals, families, providers and policymakers to enact innovative solutions that enhance mental health in autism by decreasing adverse outcomes.”

At the USC Chan Division, Angell directs the Disparity Reduction and Equity in Autism Services, or “DREAmS” lab, a multidisciplinary group that includes neurodivergent team members working together to identify, measure, understand and reduce disparities in autism diagnosis and services. For this particular project, they are joined by collaborators from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the University of Florida and the University of Indiana.

The team will also work closely with a community advisory board of autistic adults and caregivers of autistic children and youth. The board’s participation ensures the project is relevant, responsive and impactful in light of their own lived experiences, and its members will help spread and share the study’s findings as they become available.

The study team will also gather insight from a range of people who work in systems of care that provide services for autistic people — including physicians, therapists and public school and Regional Center administrators — to collectively determine how the study findings can be practically implemented within health systems to identify the most vulnerable autistic children and proactively provide appropriate supports.

“We know that, for an autistic teen experiencing a mental health crisis, the emergency department is one of the worst, most dysregulating environments to get care, so we want to minimize that by providing robust, lower-level care that meets individual needs,” Angell said. “Every year in the United States, at least half-a-million autistic children turn 18 and become autistic adults. This project will give us a much clearer idea of ways to optimize mental health for today’s autistic youth, who are tomorrow’s autistic adults.”

“Machine learning prediction of persistent adverse mental health outcomes for autistic children: Leveraging social determinants of health from clinical data” (PI: A. Angell; 1R01 MH135867) is funded by the NIH National Institute of Mental Health.

Professor Lisa Aziz-Zadeh offers the iconic Vulcan hand salute 🖖 popularized by Nimoy (Photo courtesy of Lisa Aziz-Zadeh)

Professor Lisa Aziz-Zadeh has been named a 2025 recipient of the Live Long and Prosper Tribute Award from the Nimoy Knight Foundation. The honor celebrates those whose career work exemplifies the values of the iconic “Star Trek” character Spock — rationality, peace, compassion and belonging — originally portrayed on-screen by the late actor Leonard Nimoy.

Nimoy played the half-human, half-Vulcan character Spock for nearly 50 years, beginning with the 1964 television pilot episode of “Star Trek.” Nimoy created the iconic Vulcan hand salute 🖖 and its accompanying blessing, “live long and prosper.”

“I am deeply honored to receive the “Live Long and Prosper” Tribute Award for my research on the brain–gut–microbiome system in autism,” Aziz-Zadeh said. “I grew up watching “Star Trek” and was very inspired by Leonard Nimoy’s portrayal of Mr. Spock as a deeply complex character — balancing reason and emotion/belonging and difference.”

Aziz-Zadeh is the director of the Center for the Neuroscience of Embodied Cognition, where she utilizes behavioral and neuroimaging methods like functional MRI to better understand how the brain’s rudimentary sensorimotor systems shape higher-order cognitive processing such as language, social cognition, empathy and creativity. Her research projects have been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Defense, the American Heart Association, Google, the Dana Foundation and others. She holds a joint appointment in the Brain and Creativity Institute at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Temple Grandin, world-renowned autism advocate and animal sciences professor at Colorado State University, is also a 2025 recipient of the Live Long and Prosper Award. Previous recipients include LeVar Burton, Whoopi Goldberg, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye.

The non-profit Nimoy Knight Foundation, named in memory of Nimoy, is overseen by his daughter, Julie Nimoy, and her husband, David Knight.

“Thank you to the Nimoy Knight Foundation,” Aziz-Zadeh said. “May we all live long and prosper!”

Sook-Lei Liew is the principal investigator of the newly funded Data Science and Analytics for Precision Rehabilitation (DAPR) Center, a five-year project supported by a $6.5 million P50 grant from the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Prestigious P50 grants are meant to support a full range of research and development activities around a specific, yet often multidisciplinary, problem area.

The purpose of the DAPR Center is to generate large, harmonized rehabilitation datasets for personalized, precision rehabilitation, and to improve the rigor of medical rehabilitation research by leveraging data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning. These objectives will be achieved by developing comprehensive, standardized ways in which researchers can store and manage their data, which will make it easier to combine data across rehabilitation studies.

“We are thrilled about the DAPR Center, which at its core, is all about readiness — making sure rehabilitation research is well-poised for the AI revolution that has already begun,” Liew said. “By building large, harmonized, and accessible datasets, we’re laying the foundation for truly personalized, data-driven rehabilitation. This is a transformative step for our field and will enable rehabilitation researchers nationwide to work together, identify critical scientific insights, and ultimately deliver the right rehabilitation treatment, at the right time, for each individual.”

At USC Chan, Liew directs the Neural Plasticity and Neurorehabilitation Laboratory. She also holds joint faculty appointments with the USC Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, the USC Keck School of Medicine Department of Neurology, the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute and the USC Viterbi School Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Liew and her colleagues will encourage community uptake by developing a DAPR data schema that will bring together many different types of data, providing hands-on consulting for data management and analysis, building accessible educational resources and creating user-friendly tools, like those to be developed as part of Liew’s new NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke-funded project to better forecast stroke survivors’ recovery through 12 months after stroke.

One of Liew’s longtime collaborators, James Finley, associate professor at the USC Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, will lead DAPR’s Community Engagement and Outreach Core to build community partnerships, disseminate DAPR developments and resources, host events and foster a community of practice.

The DAPR Center will be part of a dynamic network of six national Medical Rehabilitation Research Centers collectively tackling topics such as precision rehabilitation, data science and analytics, community-engaged research and health promotion.

Data Science and Analytics for Precision Rehabilitation (DAPR) Center (1P50 HD118603; PI: Liew, S.-L.) is funded by the NIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.