Integrating social transformation into occupational therapy education

Introduction: Current international standards for occupational therapy education expect programs to prepare occupational therapits to engage in community capacity building to address occupational, social and health inequities (WFOT, 2016). Social transformation involves communities (understood to include organisations, institutions as well as local neighbourhoods) in collaborative occupational participation as a means to change practices, systems and structures to ameliorate inequitable access to occupational opportunities (Schiller et al., 2023). Failure to incorporate concepts and methods for social transformation within occupational therapy curricula perpetuates systemic injustices, given what is known about inequitable access to individualized health services (Matson & Galea, 2024), socio-political determinations of health and well-being (Spiegel et al., 2015), and their impact on occupational participation (Hammell, 2020). Yet, educators still struggle to integrate content on social transformation within programs that are dominated by individualized biomedical content.
Approach: Participating educators and practitioners will be encouraged o discuss their experiences with incorporating social transformation into entry-level occupational therapy curricula, focusing on strategies to overcome challenges, and the content, resources, and pedagogies used. Workshop facilitators will support small groups of participants in reflecting on and summarizing their experiences.
Findings: With participants' consent, workshop findings will be sent to all participants for their review and comments. Participants will be invited to co-author an article for distribution through relevant educational, professional, and research organizations and / or a peer-reviewed journal.
Implications for Occupational Science: Support for educators' integra ion of social transformation into occupational therapy curricula is intended to reduce occupational, social and health inequities.