Student Blog
Getting Involved

American College of Lifestyle Medicine Conference ⟩
January 11, 2019, by Serena

Getting Involved What are OS/OT?

Last semester seemed like a whirlwind. My academic workload consisted of 4 courses: Health Promotion and Wellness, Adulthood and Aging, Occupation-Centered Programs for the Community, and the Mental Health immersion. Apart from classwork, I also completed my Level I Fieldwork at USC’s Kortschak Center for Learning and Creativity, tabled and advocated for OT at various events such as the Latino Expo Event, and held the role as a Care Team Coordinator for the Student Run Clinic. One of my biggest accomplishments was attending two conferences. I previously mentioned the OTAC conference in Pasadena, California, and I would love to tell you more about the second conference I attended: the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) conference in Indiana.

What is the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM)?
The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) is a a healthcare association dedicated to preventing, managing, and reversing chronic diseases with lifestyle interventions. The ACLM healthcare professionals strive to place a greater emphasis on helping clients sustain healthier lifestyles such as engaging in health promoting diets, regular physical activity, adequate sleep, stress management, and avoidance of substance and drug misuse.

My top 5 reasons for attending the ACLM conference.

1. Further my education in lifestyle medicine: Attend seminars and lectures led by renowned healthcare professionals in the field of Lifestyle Medicine (LM) like Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Colin Campbell, Dr. Dean Ornish, and Dr. Wayne Dysinger (whose wife happens to be an OT 😊).

2. Learn about and advocate for OTs role in LM: At the conference I was the only individual in the field of OT. It is an amazing feeling to be able to advocate for our profession in the growing field of LM since we are trained to address lifestyle changes with a focus on habits and routines.

3. Focus on my passion: I love being able to combine my interests with my profession.

4. Meet and connect with other healthcare professionals with the same interests: One of the highlights of the event was being surrounded by people who not only wanted to help others live a healthier and happier life but they too were practicing a healthy lifestyle. For example, all of the food at the conference was whole food plant-based and a 5k walk during the conference was built within the schedule. Talk about work life balance!

5. Gain skills to then go back home and make a change to my life and to the lives of others: I am grateful to have a roommate who is a medical student, Kacie Amacher, and also attended the conference. We are both passionate about helping others live a healthier life. Most importantly we realize the importance of the change first having to start with our own habits and routines.

Words of Advice
During your own OT journey, whether it be before, during, or after your academic career, I would highly suggest attending a conference related to your interests. Especially an interest where you feel OT may belong but lacks a wide presence. If you have any questions at all about ACLM and OTs involvement please feel free to contact me!

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OTSC ⟩
November 30, 2018, by Evan

Getting Involved

I’ve spoken in a few posts about my role as OTAC representative for the student body at various external events, but have yet to touch my role the executive board of OTSC. OTSC stands for Occupational Therapy and Science Council, and is a student organization that has a significant influence on the extracurricular lives of students in the Chan Division. ALL students are stakeholders in the OTSC organization and welcome to attend monthly meetings. The Executive Board of OTSC includes elected representatives from other student organizations, plus a variety of other elected leadership positions. We are also blessed with the guidance of two wonderful faculty liaisons. OTSC meetings generally serve to facilitate communication between the various student organizations, as well as provide a forum in which information can be disseminated and various events can be coordinated. For instance, last April the other OTAC chair and I wanted to host a letter writing party to promote advocacy on state legislative issues. By announcing our intentions at an OTSC meeting we were able to get the word out to the whole student body, vastly increasing participation, and even got a budget approved so that pizza could be provided! I’d encourage anyone pursuing a degree in the Chan Division to find a way to get involved in OTSC. Not only is it a great way to be of service, some of my closest friends in the program have come from this type of extracurricular participation. Feel free to message me if you have any questions!

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What is it like to be a Student Ambassador? ⟩
November 4, 2018, by Melissa

Getting Involved

Hey guys! For this post I wanted to talk a bit about what I do as a Student Ambassador. I feel like we do a bit of everything, therefore I wanted to offer some more insight in case any of you would like to pursue this position when you’re in the program!

First, I want to provide a bit of background information on my journey to becoming a Student Ambassador. When I was first considering applying to USC, I attended an information session and had my first interaction with an Ambassador. I remember thinking, “Wow, that’s such a cool opportunity for students!” but didn’t think much about it after that as I was more concerned with getting into the program at the time. As the application date got closer, I scheduled a meeting with Dr. Carley — the previous Director of Admissions — and a tour with a Student Ambassador. It was an incredibly personal experience; Dr. Carley answered some of my burning questions about the application, and the ambassador shared about her experience with the program and answered my questions regarding life as a student. It was then that I realized how badly I wanted to get into the OT program at USC, and how much I would love to be a Student Ambassador.

Fast-forward two years, and here I am! It’s still pretty surreal to think back to that time, and I’m incredibly grateful to be able to be a part of this program and to be an Ambassador. This position gives me the opportunity to combine my passion for the program and my passion for occupational therapy all into one!

So what exactly do we do? Well, I wasn’t kidding when I said that we do a little bit of everything. We help with information sessions, we correspond with potential applicants and admitted students, we give presentations to pre-health and pre-OT clubs to spread the word about our program and OT as a whole, we present and table at conferences and grad fairs, we give tours to students and their families, and help with all sorts of events! Although there are things that we all do as Ambassadors, there are also things that are unique to each of our positions! For example, Joyce is in charge of all things social media, Serena and I help the admissions team and have Diversity projects that we work on, Jess is responsible for event planning, and Evan works on the content calendar! We each get to work on things that appeal to us and that we have a skill set in, which makes the job even more interesting. In addition, we have an Ambassador from the OTD program as well as the MA-I (post professional) program, which makes us a pretty well rounded team. They each correspond with students that have questions about their specific programs, and have their own individual projects as well.

Ultimately, this job provides us with a great opportunity to advocate for our profession, to increase awareness about OT and the Chan program, and to give potential applicants information about our program from a student’s point of view, among many other things. I’m very lucky to be a part of a team that is made up of such kind, hard-working, and passionate people that make the job so much fun.

If you have any questions about the position or about scheduling a tour with us, feel free to reach out!

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Presenting at Conference ⟩
November 2, 2018, by Antonietta

Classes Getting Involved

The past few weeks have been so exciting (and exhausting). I presented at two conferences; the first was AOTA’s Education Summit, in Louisville, KY, and the second, closer to home, was the OTAC’s annual conference in Pasadena. It was an amazing experience and I wanted to share a little bit about it!

In the second year of the Master’s program, I elected to do Directed Research (OT590) with Dr. Rafeedie, completing 2 units in the Fall and 2 units in the Spring. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m interested in education so I created this experience to do some research about pedagogy and best practices when it comes to simulation. My inspiration for this topic stemmed from being frustrated in some of my courses when asked to role play with my peers. I was quite uncomfortable role playing and I was not convinced it added my clinical skills as a future occupational therapist. From this seed of frustration grew the foundation of our presentations: a low to high fidelity chart for the different types of simulations, an evidence matrix outlining the support for simulation in education, recommendations from the literature about best practice surrounding this instructional method, and finally a piece that I was not expecting at all when I started out. This unexpected piece was the most interesting of them all . . . looking at simulation from the disability perspective.

Upon reflection, this perspective is the root of why I was uncomfortable with simulation in class.  Although the goal was to learn, it felt a little bit like a mockery when I pretended to have a prescribed difference. It took looking at this in class requirement from an outside, academic point of view, and discussing it with my mentor to be able to identify the source of this discomfort and start to think critically yet constructively about it. We went to the disability literature and discovered that since the 1990s it has contained a call to stop disability simulation. It cites research which has shown that disability simulation has many unintended consequences. So, we looked further, read more research, and started to build an idea of what types of simulation add to positive educational outcomes and how we can use simulation respectfully and ethically. The bottom line is, we need to be coupling simulation with lived experiences perspectives. As OTs, we valued the phenomenological components of care and recovery that simulation does not provide. These nuances, which simulation simply cannot capture, are what sets us apart from other healthcare professionals.  We must be mindful about explicitly including the disability perspective in our curriculum and learning activities. 

It was exhilarating to share what we found and developed at the two conferences. Our audiences were very active participants with many questions and different points of view to share. This has been an amazing way to end this project (for now) and it was only possible because of Dr. Rafeedie and USC, so Fight On!

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2018 OTAC Annual Conference ⟩
October 29, 2018, by Serena

Getting Involved

This past weekend the Student Ambassador team and I set up USC’s booth for the Occupational Therapy Association of California (OTAC) Annual Conference in Pasadena. I wanted to share a few pictures of the booth that attracted so many occupational therapists and occupational therapy students interested in the many programs that we have to offer. In particular, there was much interest in the Doctorate of Occupational Therapy (OTD) program, Doctor of Philosophy in Occupational Science (PhD) program, and Lifestyle Redesign®. However, there was an overwhelming interest in our USC stickers and Halloween candy!

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