Project AIM uses meta-analysis to gather and analyze data from multiple existing studies to draw broader conclusions. Instead of conducting new experiments, researchers like Sandbank review the work of others, looking for patterns and trends across many studies. This approach allows them to see a bigger picture that would not be apparent in a single study. The project is ongoing and constantly updated as more research and data become available.

Prior to 2015, conducting a meta-analysis of all early autism interventions together wasn’t feasible. However, the development of specialized mathematical techniques around that time made it possible, allowing the initiative to officially begin in 2017. The team published their first paper in 2020, followed by a major update in 2023 in the BMJ, one of the highest-impact medical journals.

The current dataset includes 289 studies, and the team is now conducting an update that includes research published since 2021. The update begins with a systematic search that initially identified around 8,000 abstracts, each of which must be screened for eligibility. Selected studies then move into the coding phase. Sandbank serves as the primary coder, while a group of reliability coders –based at UNC, with partner labs at Vanderbilt, Boston College, Florida State, and soon Boys Town in Nebraska— crosscheck the work for accuracy. Many coders have been with Project AIM since their doctoral or even undergraduate years, supporting the project’s growth across multiple institutions.

Project AIM organizes data by intervention type, intensity, and other key features. With such a large dataset, the team can examine both broad patterns and the effects of specific interventions, including which approaches are effective and which children benefit most. Insights that would be invisible in a single study become detectable across this large body of evidence. The team has recently examined whether children’s benefit from intervention depends on their initial cognitive and language scores in a forthcoming paper published in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.

Since 2021, the number of eligible studies has doubled, reflecting both the pace of autism research and the importance of regular updates. At least 200 more studies are predicted to be added to the dataset, expanding it to include approximately 500 studies in total; the current Project AIM dataset features data from over 13,000 participants, and with those 200 additional studies they expect that number to rise significantly. Sandbank says that this increase highlights the rapid growth of research in the field. With continued growth of the dataset, the field gains a clearer understanding of which interventions have consistent, high-quality evidence behind them.

Sandbank also regularly collaborates with researchers across the globe, working with teams in France, the United Kingdom, and Italy. She recently co-authored the largest-ever umbrella review examining the effects of complementary, alternative, and integrative medicine approaches for autistic individuals with researchers from France and the United Kingdom, published in Nature Human Behavior. The team found that alternative treatments for autism, such as mind-body medicine and natural product-based therapies, have little evidentiary support. Recently, the Project AIM team began conducting a rapid meta-analysis in response to new recommendations about folinic acid (also known as folate or leucovorin) for autism that was raised during a recent press conference. They are collaborating with another meta-analysis team, including scholars in Italy and France, to review the few studies that currently exist on this topic.

Sandbank works to disseminate the findings of her research directly to clinicians that support young children on the autism spectrum through other mediums as well.  In March 2025, she delivered a keynote address at the Elevate Your Impact Conference, a clinician-focused conference hosted by Catalight, one of the largest behavioral healthcare networks in the nation. She followed this address up with an appearance on the “What’s Up With Catalight!” podcast. These clinician-facing speaking engagements allow Sandbank to ensure that early intervention therapists continue to learn about the ever-evolving evidence in this field.

When it comes to non-pharmacological treatments, they often are not given as much scrutiny as medications or medical devices. Because these approaches are not thought to directly impact a patient’s physical health, providers, patients, and families may assume they are safe and beneficial, even if little research is available to support that conclusion. However, this can be unfair to patients and families, as it may lead them toward treatments that don’t have strong or consistent evidence supporting them.  Everyone deserves access to interventions that are clinically proven to help, which is why Sandbank recently co-authored a commentary with 25 other autism researchers calling for increased quality and reporting standards in autism research, in the journal  Autism Research.  Sandbank says that the quality of available evidence increases with each update of Project AIM. “As more high-quality randomized controlled trials are published, we are able to draw more confident conclusions about the efficacy of early childhood interventions, and give more precise and helpful recommendations that families need.”

In 2020, Kawabata began her PhD at UNC-CH, and sought a community to connect with. Through the Community Practice Lab, led by Dr. Ryan Lavalley, she was introduced to the Fairview Community and Habitat for Humanity of Orange County. There, she began building relationships through working on an oral history project, documenting the neighborhood’s history.

UNC enabled Kawabata to delve deeply into occupational science. The flexibility of the program allowed her to “explore and understand what occupational science is and envision what [she] wanted to do.” Kawabata’s dissertation, titled “A Community Engaged Ethnography of Play in Fairview–A Historically Black and Multicultural Neighborhood in Hillsborough, North Carolina”, focuses on the occupation of play among children and youth in a historically Black and multicultural neighborhood in North Carolina. Kawabata explains that a significant part of her research involved participating in the community and building connections. Specifically, she worked closely with a group of middle schoolers, who named themselves the “Kool Kid Squad”.

Kawabata says that UNC-CH is a place where “the faculty are incredibly supportive. [you’re not required] to know what your project will be when you enter [the program]–but you have to stay curious and engaged.”

Kawabata is currently applying for Optional Practical Training (OPT), a program that enables international students to work in the United States for up to one year while gaining practical experience in their field of study. She is eager to continue contributing to and advancing the discipline of occupational science through this opportunity.

UNC’s OS/OT at the 2025 Occupational Science Europe Conference.

The conference consisted of workshops, keynotes, and valuable networking opportunities with professionals whom the students had previously read about. Several UNC PhD students presented research from their dissertations, strengthening the university’s reputation and showcasing the caliber of its OSOT program on a European stage. Assistant Professor Ryan Lavalley, co-facilitated a pre-conference workshop with the International Social Transformation through Occupation Network (ISTTON). Lavalley shared, “[The workshop] focused on critically examining community projects and initiatives to help practitioners identify ideas that help effect community-level change through an occupational science perspective.” He also reflected, “I also had the opportunity to co-facilitate a discussion on dialoguing indigenous and queer theories and their influence on our science, which was wonderfully generative given the many different perspectives and lived experiences in the room. It highlighted the plurality of both racial and queer experiences in the world.”

Assistant Professor Khalilah Johnson reflected on the conference, saying, “I think it’s important to highlight that this is a … global audience, and I think it’s a big deal that we had such a presence there. It’s one thing that Ryan and I were there, but three of our students presented, and the feedback we received was overwhelming. We felt like very proud parents … to have people approach us and say, you all obviously have a phenomenal doctoral program, just how impressive our students were and how they were able to handle … questions and critique and be in dialogue in very scholarly ways.”

Outside the event, our attendees took advantage of their new environment and decided to explore England. They focused on local gems, meeting with current residents to locate the best sights and food spots, rather than focusing on tourist spots. This experience not only helped PhD students connect with people in their field but also allowed them to connect with their professors outside of a classroom environment. They noted that traveling together made the PhD journey feel less intimidating. Johnson said, “It was really cool … just being able to experience a new place with students. I think they … get a chance to see a different version of each other as well. It’s one thing to see each other in the classroom and in our offices. It’s another thing to hop on an airplane and fly 8 hours.”

Overall, the experience provided a rare opportunity for OSOT students to connect with peers abroad and amplify UNC’s presence in the occupational science community.

Till is originally from Claremont, California, a town known as “the land of trees and PhDs.” She attended University of California-Santa Cruz for her undergrad where she received her degree in Feminist Studies. Later on, she received her M.S. in Occupational Therapy from New York University. Her professional background spans from acute rehab, skilled nursing, and home health with a focus on acute care.

Till expressed that her choice to study Occupational Therapy was motivated by her youngest brother who had a lot of sensory challenges as a child. She shared that it was her mom that found OT and that was the thing that helped her brother the most. She describes OT as “holistic”, requiring “a lot of collaboration with patient.”

“I’m really interested in adult learning and training this new group of OTs coming into the field,” said Till. “I teach a lot of the biomedical aspects of the program and have a specific interest in safety for new clinicians and students, especially through habit and role formation around safe patient handling.”

Looking ahead, Till is working on establishing the development of an acute care fellowship at UNC, set to launch in January 2026. The program will help new clinicians become specialists in acute care and gain expertise in the field. “I’m excited to be here,” she added. “There are so many great people who work here and who have a lot of experience. I’m learning a lot from them.”

Join us in welcoming Hillary Till to the full time faculty.

Before Danielle Chadwick was a first-year Master of Science in the

“Though I am a former resident of the area, I hadn’t had the opportunity to return to the community and view it through an OT lens,” Chadwick said.  

Although Onslow County is not in the 5-county Southeast area served from the Novant program, it does border the region. Chadwick, along with two other UNC MSOT class of 2026 students Miranda Bravo and Daniel Murray, were selected to participate in the Division’s first-ever Occupational Rural Health Committee (OTRHC), funded by the Novant Steeples of Excellence grant.  

The goal of the OTRHC is to recruit students from the class of 2026 to participate, help prepare students to work with SERVE and Novant to educate others about Occupational Therapy (OT) as a potential career pathway and engage with different settings in the region, assess interest in career pathways, and develop a program guide that could be replicated in future years. Focusing on a Southeast 5-county region: Bladen, Brunswick, Columbus, New Hanover, and Pender counties, the three student members completed site visits, engaging local practitioners, and completed school visits to recruit providers and broaden access to occupational therapy services. Student members received a stipend and location priority to complete one of their two 12-week Fieldwork II rotations in the region. Student members selected demonstrated strong ties and personal investment in rural health. 

“When I joined the OT Rural Health Committee at UNC, I expected to see and learn about specific healthcare needs of the rural communities of Southeastern NC,” Bravo said. “I was surprised to hear from practitioners working in the area about how broad and interconnected these needs are. While I did start to get a sense of some of these needs—the distance patients have to travel to receive healthcare services, the difficulty of finding interpreters for patients who do not speak English, the shortage of healthcare providers living in rural areas—I feel that I have so much left to learn about the causes underlying healthcare inaccessibility.” 

In the fall of 2024, the three students traveled to Novant New Hanover Medical Center, Novant Health Rehabilitation Center-Oleander, and a private Pender County outpatient facility to engage with local practitioners and OT leaders in Wilmington and the surrounding area. Additionally, committee members presented at UNC’s “HEAL day with the HEELs,” which partnered with the Ingram Institute’s SERVE initiative to have students from the Southeast come to UNC’s campus and follow a “patient” on the continuum of care, Murray, Chadwick and Bravo also represented a booth for OT at the Pender County 8th grade career fair at Heide Trask High School in Pender County.  

Chadwick found the site visits especially impactful. 

“The highlight of my experience was our site visits to Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center and a couple of local outpatient clinics in Pender County and New Hanover County,” Chadwick said. “We were able to learn about strengths of rural medicine, such as close-knit communities and long-term relationships, as well as the barriers to OT access, such as a lack of interpreters and transportation difficulties for residents. I hope to continue to increase awareness of the impact of OT can have on communities, as well as aiding in identifying ways to allow for better access to services.” 

Participation in the committee continues into the spring 2025 semester. OTRHC had a poster accepted at the North Carolina Occupational Therapy Association 2025 Spring conference and students will travel again to the region in April to speak to high school students about OT as a potential career.  

Additional OTRHC members include UNC Division of OS/OT Novant lead Sara Peña, Director of Strategic Initiatives Darius Ingram, and Ingram Institute Southeast SERVE Program Coordinator Edye Barbour, who led regional classroom visits and partnered with Cape Fear Community College for the 3rd annual Health Care Career Exploration Fair March 20, 2025. By the end of its first year, the committee will have seen over 1,000 Southeast students via career fairs and “HEAL day with the HEELs” events. Additionally, OTRHC connected with outside OT-specific resources of the New Hanover County Language Access Collaborative.  

“Being involved with the OTRHC as a first-year MSOT student was eye-opening,” Murray said. “This year truly deepened my understanding of healthcare challenges in southeastern NC, particularly relating to access barriers and skilled provider shortages.” 

This hybrid event was attended by students, faculty and staff. After Dr. Manigault Bryant’s presentation, attendees enjoyed a reception in the OT apartment.

If you were unable to attend the Mitchell Symposium on Thursday evening, the presentation was recorded and is posted on the OSOT website.

Selingo practiced in skilled nursing, school, and inpatient behavioral settings in Minnesota and a skilled nursing facility in Milwaukee before returning to UWM in 2020 to complete her PhD. During this time she taught as an Ad Hoc Instructor while maintaining a PRN OT position in an inpatient behavioral health setting. She graduated from UWM with her PhD in May of 2024 and her dissertation work focused on using Photovoice and phenomenological interviews to explore the lived experiences of sexual minority women in emerging adulthood who use substances. Selingo has also used Photovoice to explore OT students’ lived experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I have a deep love of qualitative research methods in exploring our shared and differing lived experiences, particularly across student and women’s experiences,” said Selingo. “My passion – behavioral health and addressing the spectrum of substance use – influences my research, with a goal of deepening our understanding of women’s needs surrounding substance use and health.”

Through this research Selingo hopes to increase and expand occupational scientists’ understanding of the spectrum of substance use, while simultaneously better preparing OT professionals in addressing various populations’ mental health and substance use-related needs across settings. In addition to her research, Selingo is also passionate about student andragogical learning strategies, the impact of personal reflexivity on one’s practice, occupational justice, and health and equity factors surrounding women, the queer community, and older adults.

Selingo is excited to continue to develop the field of occupational science  through research, work, and collaboration with others at UNC while preparing students to serve North Carolinians.

“The faculty and students who are a part of the Division of OS/OT are truly amazing, both through their knowledge and kindness,” said Selingo. “It was a very, very easy decision to accept this position, as I feel very welcomed and supported across the Division and School of Medicine in pursuing my research interests and empowering students. I am SO excited to be a part of UNC and the Division of OS/OT!”

In her free time Selingo enjoys reading, spending time with her family and friends, and cuddling with her kitties, Belle and Shlomo. She also enjoys exploring historically haunted and unusual places to ghost hunt with her husband. Next time you see her, share your pet photos and your favorite places to explore!

Initial Steps Toward Building an OT Career

Coppola came to UNC in 1983 to pursue a MS in Occupational Therapy to pursue a career as a pediatric occupational therapist. After graduating from the program, she began her first job at Duke Medical Center, where she worked for 11 years in various settings throughout the medical center.

“During that time, I found myself intrigued by the lives of the older adults I worked with,” said Coppola. “In their narratives, it became clear that quality of life hinged on occupations – having meaningful things to do. Occupations were not just ends in themselves, but were vital for social connections, health and joy.”

However, Coppola realized that medical settings did not often foster “doing” in ways that enhanced patient lives and their health. This, paired with policy and operational transitions within the healthcare system in North Carolina, left Coppola with an unexpected opportunity to consider – applying for a faculty position within the program she graduated from a decade earlier.

“I did not imagine leaving my job until I was encouraged to apply for a faculty position at UNC, and upon reviewing the philosophy and curriculum of the program, it seemed to be a fit for me – especially with a chance to teach about aging,” she said. “I loved the prospect of preparing budding occupational therapists to have the strengths, skills, and confidence to make meaningful change in their clients’ lives, regardless of the situation of their practice.”

Research and Scholarship: Progression Over the Decades

Coppola notes that her research and scholarship emphasis has evolved with each decade of her life. In her 20’s, she taught in special education and then became an occupational therapist. In her 30’s, her focus was clinical practice and management of services. As she reached her 40’s and found her stride as an educator at UNC, Coppola shifted her research focus to aging.

This time was spent researching feasibility and effects of preventive home visits for older adults, publishing articles about advanced practice in aging, developing a National Board Certification in Gerontology with the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), and creating interprofessional programs focused on aging for OT students. However, even more impactful on her work during this time was her direct experience with declines and loss of older adults in her life.

“I learned so much from their grace and journeys, and it indeed seemed more of a lesson than I had ever learned through my professional work in aging,” said Coppola. “My mother, in particular, was teaching me until her final breath, and inspired our naming a scholarship in her honor.”

Certificate in Aging Students – 2008

Arts Across Ages Team

In her 50’s, Coppola’s research shifted again to focus on international work and experiences. She served as the U.S. Delegate to the World Federation of Occupational Therapy (WFOT) as well as the WFOT Program Coordinator for Research. These opportunities opened the doors for learning about OT practice and culture around the world, building valuable connections and collaborating on a global scale.

Finally, in her 60’s and as her teaching career began drawing to a close, Coppola spent her time integrating her interests in her research – in particular, she has been involved with a study of interprofessional teamwork for older adults receiving chemotherapy, led by Ashley Leak Bryant, PhD, in UNC’s School of Nursing. Coppola has also continued researching arts- and humanities-based learning for health professionals, leading to publications describing impacts of arts-based pedagogy for OT students.

Pakistan & USA WFOT Delegates

Malawi Occupational Therapists

Colleagues in Thailand

Latin America & USA WFOT Delegates

Reflections on the Evolution of OS/OT Over the Years

When she began her OT education at UNC, the profession was unregulated and the number of occupational therapists were few within the state of North Carolina. In the decades since, Coppola recognizes growth in every way – the profession has developed evidence and expertise to address evolving societal needs, particularly for people experiencing age-related decline, mental health challenges, homelessness, neurodivergence, premature birth, displacement, cancer, trauma, stigma and other challenges related to the social determinants of health.

She notes that occupational science, which is still considered to be a “young” academic discipline, has deepened and broadened understanding of the complexity of occupation. “Occupational science has helped the practice of occupational therapy see the inseparable nature of context – culture, justice, beliefs, time, power – on human doing,” she said. “Additionally, the study of occupation beyond the direct services of OTs has drawn attention to meso- and macro-levels of society; for example, unemployment patterns, food insecurity and occupational injustices.”

Time Well Spent within UNC’s Division of OS/OT

While Coppola has seen her work recognized at the division, department and university levels – she received UNC’s Post-Baccalaureate Teaching Award in 2023 – she shares that one of her biggest accomplishments has been building interdisciplinary connections that have benefitted student education.

“It has been amazing to engage with colleagues in arts and humanities as well as those in health professions across campus,” she said. “I am pleased with how we have fostered an intellectual climate for collaboration and innovation, as well as many interdisciplinary encounters for students.”

Within the division, Coppola served as the OT Academic Fieldwork Coordinator for 25 years. While a challenging tasks, it brought her much satisfaction to make connections within the OT community, between students and practitioners, and among students as they integrated classroom and practice-based learning.

Coppola also emphasizes the impact her colleagues have made on her time in the Division of OS/OT. “My colleagues in the division are brilliant, kind and passionate, and I have learned so much from each of them,” she said. “And the students have been the breath of my existence – I cannot put into words how wonderful it has been to get to know them as magnificent human beings. I am fortunate to have been part of their lives for a time, and I know they are now providing competent and caring occupational therapy to others.”

SAGE Book Signing

Students at The Farm

Continued Commitment: The Virginia Davis Coppola Occupational Therapy Scholarship

Though she has retired, Coppola continues to show commitment to both the field of occupational therapy and the Division of OS/OT at UNC. She has been diligently planning the annual conference for the Society for the Study of Occupation:USA, taking place in Durham in October 2024. The theme is ‘The Art of Occupation: Creativity, Critical Theory, and Social Transformation’.

Looking to support future occupational therapists, Coppola and her husband, Dr. Michael Tilson, have established the Virginia Davis Coppola Occupational Therapy Scholarship. The scholarship provides support for second year occupational therapy students in the Division of Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy who demonstrate a commitment to justice-based, occupation-centered, and community-oriented practice with older adults. Justice-based occupational therapy emphasizes inclusion and social justice in practice with older adults, by addressing systemic inequalities and advocating for the rights and well-being of marginalized individuals in this demographic group.

This scholarship is offered as a lasting tribute to Coppola’s late mother, Virginia Davis Coppola. Her profound wisdom and quiet generosity shone in her care for people suffering from loneliness, poverty and societal inequities. Virginia Davis Coppola was inspired by work in Chicago Settlement Houses in the 1940s, the very place where the profession of occupational therapy was founded decades before. She gave tirelessly to friends and family and in her career as a social worker for abused and special needs children in foster care. She was an avid volunteer with the Crisis Assistance Ministry in Charlotte and the League of Women Voters. With an unshakable belief in the profound worth of every individual, she advocated for the rights of individuals and families and fought for democracy and socially just policies. Her grace as she aged was an inspiration for the Coppola family.

The purpose of this scholarship is to continue Virginia Davis Coppola’s influence and values by cultivating future leaders in occupational therapy who passionately champion the voices of older people who are marginalized, and to advance the cause of occupational justice for aging individuals and their families. To make a gift of any amount to support the scholarship, click here.

When asked for a final reflection on her career and hopes for the future of the OT program at UNC, Coppola shares that she feels incredibly fortunate for the roles she has played during her time in the division – past, present and future.

Aldrich and Bailliard returned to UNC-Chapel Hill to deliver a keynote presentation for the Spring 2024 Mitchell Symposium, hosted by the Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, and it was as if no time had passed as the duo discussed applications of occupational science in practice and policy. By sharing some of their recent research, case studies and insights into various settings and situations where occupational science can make an impact, Aldrich and Bailliard opened an insightful and inspiring conversation among those in attendance.

In line with their return to the program, Aldrich and Bailliard shared details about the meaning behind their visit, ongoing projects and their hopes for the fields of occupational therapy and occupational science in the future.

Dr. Rebecca “Beccy” Aldrich: Connections and Collaboration are Key

Aldrich is an occupational scientist and Professor of Clinical Occupational Therapy within the University of Southern California (USC) Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. She received both her B.S. in Occupational Therapy and M.A. in Occupational Therapy from USC before achieving her PhD in Occupational Science from UNC-Chapel Hill.

Whereas her PhD study focused on discouraged workers’ experiences, her research has since evolved to widen that focus to include situations outside of full-time, formal paid work, such as long-term unemployment, precarious work, retirement and returning to work following severe illness. Through an ongoing research collaboration with Dr. Debbie Laliberte Rudman at Western University in Ontario, Canada, Aldrich’s research has adopted a more critical stance that examines how possibilities and boundaries in everyday life are shaped by formal and informal societal structures.

“I have also expanded my lines of research to include scholarship of teaching and learning in occupational science and occupational therapy, which I initiated during my time as a faculty member at Saint Louis University,” she says, where she achieved tenure as an associate professor before moving to her current position at USC. “Through both lines of research as well as professional service activities, I’ve also developed strong international relationships with other occupational scientists and occupational therapists and made efforts to help develop the fields overall.”

As she looks ahead to the future of the fields of occupational science and occupational therapy, Aldrich is excited by the technology-driven opportunities to learn with colleagues from various global contexts, allowing for exposure to ways of thinking and doing that she may not otherwise encounter. “There are many possibilities within OS and OT that can come from increased opportunities to develop and apply global understandings about occupation,” she notes.

When asked to reflect on returning to campus to speak at the Mitchell Symposium, Aldrich looks back at her decision to pursue her PhD in Occupational Science at UNC as one of significance, and one of the best she has made both personally and professionally. “When I made the decision to attend UNC, I was moving away from the only part of the country I had ever really known – California – and a university – USC – where I had happily completed two degrees. My move to North Carolina was a big step outside of my comfort zone,” she says. “I see that step as a pivotal part of my growth process, both because it exposed me to new contexts and new ways of thinking and because it positioned me to be an active collaborator with established scholars in the early days of my career.”

Returning to Bondurant Hall to share how her research and scholarship has developed in the time since leaving UNC was meaningful to Aldrich and offered her a welcome opportunity to think back on the course of her career.

Aldrich was awarded and delivered the Canadian Society of Occupational Scientists Townsend & Polatajko Lectureship in 2023. View of list of selected publications here.

Dr. Antoine Bailliard: Mental Illness Interventions Through Community Based Practice

Bailliard is an Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy within Duke University’s School of Medicine. He earned both his M.S. in Occupational Therapy and his PhD in Occupational Science at UNC-Chapel Hill. After graduation Bailliard worked for a year as a clinician at Central Regional Hospital, an inpatient psychiatric hospital in Butner, NC, and then applied for a faculty position in the Division of OSOT at UNC, where he worked for nine years and achieved tenure as an associate professor before moving to his current position at Duke.

With a focus on mental health, Baillard’s work has primarily revolved around developing, improving and testing innovative community mental health service delivery models – he has received two federal grants totaling $5 million over 10 years to develop and test new interventions for adults with serious mental illness who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. The aim of his current work in this space is to de-medicalize mental healthcare and focus on meaningful participation and social inclusion. “These grants have enabled us to be really innovative and think outside of the box, which is incredibly exciting,” says Bailliard.

Additionally, Bailliard’s theoretical work focuses on developing new conceptual models for understanding sensory processing and developing the occupational justice perspective using the capabilities framework. He has been working with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to develop and implement their Complex Care Management program, which focuses on helping adults with serious mental illness transition out of adult care homes and into independent living. Since developing the program, Bailliard now serves as a consultant and trainer for the occupational therapists hired under the program in the state, and also works as a trainer and consultant for the Institute for Best Practices as UNC Chapel Hill’s Department of Psychiatry to help mental health providers across the state enhance their ability to support meaningful participation of adults with serious mental illness in the community. His efforts reach beyond North Carolina as well, thanks to his ongoing consultation with UCLA and the LA County Department of Mental Health to develop and test a triage screen to help homeless outreach workers identify people with mental illness who would benefit from a referral to a specialized mental health outreach team.

Bailliard is energized by some of the new overlap between OS and OT – he recognizes the field of occupational science has made a significant impact on occupational therapy to where OT practitioners are moving beyond the medical model to recognize a need to focus on meaningful participation and occupation instead of discrete performance skills. “In our region, what excites me is how community mental health OT has really taken a hold in North Carolina,” says Bailliard. “The Complex Care Management program is the first statewide initiative to my knowledge that officially sponsors community mental health OT in the United States. It’s very exciting to be a part of this initiative!”

As a double Tar Heel and former faculty, Bailliard found it a “surreal” experience to participate in this year’s Mitchell Symposium as a keynote presenter. “I always had a tremendous amount of respect for the scholars chosen for the symposium, and it’s an incredible honor to be among those who have been selected,” he says. “It’s also a lot of fun! I really enjoyed my time at UNC engaging in many discussions that were intellectually stimulating and challenging, so it’s a lot of fun to come back and participate in those discussions once again.”

Bailliard has published various articles and book chapters in the past few years – view a list of publications here.

If you missed this year’s Mitchell Symposium, you can view the recorded presentation here.

1. What is your primary area of research interest?

I utilize community-engagement research methods to involve community partners in the entire research process, ensuring that the most meaningful health issues are evaluated, and relevant findings are quickly disseminated across community groups. Specifically, our Diabetes Research and Wellness Collaboratives develop and test novel assessments and interventions designed to improve the overall health and wellness of rural families with a child living with type 1 diabetes (T1D).

2. How did you initially become interested in this area of research?

Raising a young child, now an adolescent, with type 1 diabetes allowed me to see gaps in healthcare delivery and services, especially within rural communities that I knew that occupational therapy practitioners were highly skilled to address. After discussions with other caregivers, those living with T1D, and community organizations, our team completed a PCORI Engagement Award project where we built a patient-centered advisory research team, completed research capacity training, and conceptualized a rural T1D patient-centered research agenda. Due to the success of the original project, our community-engaged research team is now enacting our collaborative research agenda to improve child health outcomes, healthcare access, and family participation and quality of life.

3. What are some recent or current projects that you have been working on?

Our Diabetes Research and Wellness Collaborative developed and tested a novel occupational therapy assessment titled the Diabetes Health Management and Distress Scale – Parents of Children. We completed a pilot randomized controlled trial to test the preliminary efficacy of telehealth occupation-based coaching intervention, and just finalized adapting and manualizing a Lifestyle Redesign intervention for rural caregivers of young children living with T1D of which we intend to test the feasibility starting in Spring 2024.

4. What impact do you hope your research/work has on your field?

We hope that the integration of occupational therapy services into endocrinology care will have a positive impact on healthcare access, child health, and family quality of life.

5. What do you enjoy about being a faculty member at UNC and in the Division of OT?

I enjoy the in-depth discussions, innovation, community, and creativity among the faculty and students.