The views expressed in the following presentation are those of the presenter and do not necessarily reflect those of STAR Institute.

Level: Introductory

Length: 2hours

Timeframe for access: Once you first choose to "Launch" this course, you will have 45 days to access the content as often as you like. Your 45-day window for access will not begin until you first click the "Launch" button.

Presenters:

Renee Watling, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA
Program Director and Chair
University of Puget Sound

Dr. Watling has been a pediatric occupational therapist in Washington State for more than 30 years, working in clinic, school, and private practice settings.She has lectured and published extensively on the topics of sensory processing, sensory-based occupational therapy intervention, challenging behavior, and topics related to services for children with autism.

She is the lead author of the American Occupational Therapy Association Practice Guideline for Children and Adolescents with Challenges in Sensory Processing and Sensory Integration and the co-editor for Autism: A Comprehensive Occupational Therapy Approach,3rd and 4th editions.

She is a Fellow of the American Occupational Therapy Association and has been on select advisory panels for the organization. She is a past Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Washington – Seattle and is currently the Program Director and Chair of the School of Occupational Therapy at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington.Her current research focuses on examining practice patterns of OTs and the experiences of families who are receiving occupational therapy services.

Sharon A. Cermak, Ed. D, OTR/L, FAOTA

Professor
University of Southern California

Sharon Cermak is Professor at the Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the Ostrow School of Dentistry, University of Southern California (USC) and Professor of Pediatrics at the USC Keck School of Medicine. She is an internationally renowned scholar, researcher, and clinician with more than 200 publications. She is a charter member of the AOTF Academy of Research and, in 2018, she was voted as one of the 100 most influential occupational therapists in the US. Her research focuses on autism spectrum disorder (ASD), dyspraxia/Developmental Coordination Disorder and sensory processing in different populations.

Dr. Cermak is especially interested in the daily activities of families and children. She has completed studies of food selectivity and mealtime behaviors, oral care in children with ASD, and the relationship of physical activity, participation, and obesity in children with motor coordination disorders. Dr. Cermak recently completed a 3.7 million dollar randomized controlled trial funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to examine the benefits of adapting the sensory environment at the dentist to enhance oral care for children with ASD.

She was a Co-investigator on NIH grants directed by Dr. Lisa Aziz-Zadeh to examine the neurobiological basis of social and motor deficits in ASD and dyspraxia.

Dr. Cermak has four grown children and seven grandchildren ranging in age from 1-12 and living in Boston, Atlanta, Hawaii, and Los Angeles making for great travel

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Diane Parham, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA
Professor Emerita
University of New Mexico

Dr. Diane Parham is Professor Emerita in the Occupational Therapy Graduate Program at the University of New Mexico (UNM). She received herbachelor's and master's degrees in occupational therapy from the University of Florida and University of Southern California, respectively, and her PhD in Education from the University of California Los Angeles.

Dr. Parham is known for her research and scholarship in the fields of sensory integration (SI), play, and occupational science. Prior to moving to New Mexico, Dr. Parham was on the faculty at the University of Southern California for over 20 years, where sheparticipated in the development of the PhD Program in Occupational Science as well as the OTD program. While on the USC faculty, Dr. Parham also taught a 4-month graduate course on sensory integration theory and practice at the Ayres Clinic for 20 years. In 2007 she joined the faculty at the University of New Mexico, where she taught courses on lifespan development, evidence-based practice, neuroanatomy, and sensory integration for 15 years. She retired from UNM in Fall of 2022.

Dr. Parham taught SI certification courses sponsored by the University of Southern California for over 25 years. While at UNM, she has received two teaching awards as well as national recognition for best research article of the year in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy. Among her publications are a textbook, Play in Occupational Therapy for Children, now being updated for a 3rd edition, and the Sensory Processing Measure (SPM and SPM-2), a set of nationally standardized questionnaires that now cover the lifespan, from infancy through older adulthood. She has co-authored the chapter on sensory integration in the pediatric OT textbook that is most widely used in the United States, Case-Smith and O’Brien’s Occupational Therapy for Children, since its first edition in 1985.Her research publications are primarily focused on issues in the field of sensory integration, but she also has contributed research on occupational therapy education.

Antoine Bailliard, PhD, OTR/L
Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy
Duke University School of Medicine

Dr. Antoine Bailliard is Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy at Duke University School of Medicine. He is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and the Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned an M.S. in Occupational Therapy and a PhD in Occupational Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

His research focuses on exploring how sensory processing patterns affect community integration and participation in meaningful occupations. His community-engaged scholarship focuses on improving the delivery of community-based services for adults with serious mental illness. His theoretical work focuses on expanding understandings of occupational justice to enhance inclusion and understandings of how sensory processing patterns affect meaningful participation.

Dr. Bailliard uses participatory methods to partner with people with lived experience with mental illness to design and implement research activities and in the development of tools and programs that improve the health, wellbeing, meaningful participation, and community integration of persons with serious mental illness. Dr.Bailliard’s clinical experience spans from working in acute inpatient mental health, chronic inpatient mental health, and community-based mental health settings. Currently, Dr. Bailliard is Co-Principal Investigator of a 5-year $2.4 million federal grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to design an innovative assertive outreach team to meet the needs of adults with serious mental illness who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

Dr. Bailliard is also a consultant for the Public Mental Health Partnership between the L.A. County Department of Mental Health and UCLA and a consultant and trainer for the Institute for Best Practices at the Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Grace Baranek, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA
Associate Dean
University of Southern California

Dr. Grace Baranek, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, is Associate Dean, Chair, and the Mrs. T.H. Chan Professor of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of Southern California. She received her bachelor’s degree in occupational therapy from the University of Illinois at the Medical Center, and both her master’s and PhD degrees in psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dr. Baranek is a prolific scholar and expert on sensory features of children with autism and their longitudinal impacts on child and family outcomes. She is the author of the Sensory Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ), widely used by researchers to characterize sensory features for children ages 2-12 years. She is also the lead author on the First Years Inventory (FYI), a screening tool for infants 6-16 months of age with elevated likelihood of autism in the community.

As director of the USC Chaninsp!re lab, she leads an interdisciplinary research team focused on the early identification of social-communication and sensory-regulatory risk markers of autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions, and on the development of parent-infant interventions. Dr. Baranek has been PI or Co-PI on many grants funded by agencies such as the NICHD, DoD, AOTA, Autism Speaks, and IES. As MPI of a study entitled “Parents and Infants Engaged (PIE): Evaluation of a Novel Intervention for Infants at Risk for Neurodevelopmental Disorders (R21 funded by NICHD), she is testing mechanisms of change in a novel parent coaching intervention, incorporating both sensory reactivity and prelinguistic communication domains to facilitate dyadic engagement in the context of daily activities and routines, based on the Optimal Engagement Band Model.

She is also Executive Director for the Sensory Processing and Autism Network (SPAN), a clinical-research partnership to grow evidence-based occupational therapy practices and knowledge mobilization. Dr. Baranek has been recognized internationally for her autism research and named AOTA Fellow, AOTF Academy of Research Member, and International Society of Autism Research Fellow.

Sarah Sawyer, MA, OTR/L
President of the Board

Spiral Foundation

Sarah is an occupational therapist with over 25 years of clinical experience working with children, families, adolescents, and adults. As the Clinical Director at OTA TheKoomar Center, she oversees all therapeutic activities. Sarah began her career in the United Kingdom. In 2003 Sarah was awarded the Elizabeth Casson Trust Scholarship from Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK, to attend Tufts University to complete her post-professional masters. Her thesis focused on therapists' clinical reasoning. Sarah has broad experience evaluating and treating individuals with Sensory Processing differences and has specialized training in listening therapies, feeding therapies and visual vestibular difficulties and DIR®Floortime Approach.

Sarah has a particular interest in working with and supporting the families of neurodiverse individuals. Sarah is also passionate in supporting individuals and families that have experienced trauma and has collaborated witha number of colleagues to support the development of the role of OT in mental health and specifically the intersection of sensory processing,trauma and attachment. Sarah regularly shares her experiences through mentoring and presentations to educational facilities and other professionals broadening understanding of sensory processing and sensory integration therapy. In conjunction with her role at OTA,

Sarah is also the president of the board of the SPIRAL Foundation - The Sensory Processing Institute of Research and Learning is a nonprofit organization founded in 2001 by Dr. Jane Koomar and Anne Trecker whose mission is to conduct research and provide professional and community education about sensory integration and sensory processing.

Heather Kuhaneck, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA
Professor and Program Director
Southern CT State University

Dr. Heather Kuhaneck is a Professor and Program Director of Occupational Therapy in the Recreation, Tourism, and Sports Management Department at Southern CT State University. She taught occupational therapy students for 19 years at Sacred Heart University, before coming to SCSU in 2023 to create the first public occupational therapy program in the state. Prior to teaching, she practiced as an occupational therapist for over 30 years, specializing in autism and sensory integration, working in urban, suburban, and rural public schools as well as private clinics in three states in New England and the midwestern US. Dr. Kuhaneck is a Fellow of the American Occupational Therapy Association and the co- editor of Case-Smith’s Occupational Therapy for Children and Adolescents. She is also the editor / co-editor of 3 editions of Autism: A Comprehensive Occupational Therapy Approach and 2 editions of Making Play Just Right. She is a co-author of the Classroom Sensory Environment Assessment and the Sensory Processing Measure first and second editions. She is certified in Ayres’ sensory integration and is fidelity trained.

Presenters Disclosures:

• Presenters did not receive monetary compensation for the presentation.

• There are no other relevant financial or nonfinancial relationships to disclose.

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Learning Objectives:

After participating in this session, attendees should be able to:

• Explain when to use a screening tool.

• Explain the pros and cons of using a standardized report measure.

• Identify at least two specific tools related to the sensory integration process and the construct they explore.

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Who should attend:

Occupational therapists, occupational therapy assistants, physical therapists, speech language pathologists, educators, child development specialists, mental health professionals, and other allied health professionals. All are welcome, although the event is geared towards human service professionals seeking a better understanding of the sensory integration process and sensory integration therapy as conceptualized by Ayres.

Instructional Methods:

PowerPoint Lecture

Cancellation Policy:

Because this program is recorded and accessible at your convenience, cancellations are not typically accepted. Please contact education@sensoryheatlh.org if you have any questions or concerns.

Do you have a disability that would require special accommodation?

Please contact us at education@sensoryhealth.org and describe how we can help accommodate your needs.

The views expressed in the following presentation are those of the presenter and do not necessarily reflect those of STAR Institute.