Brittany St. John, MS, OTR/L

Position title: Morse Scholar 2017-2020

Brittany St. John

My research focuses broadly on the health and wellbeing for children and adults with developmental disabilities. I am particularly interested in contextual factors of health and development such as dyadic relationships with caregivers, engagement in shared activities or co-occupations, and the impact of socioeconomic factors. My current projects are: (1) exploring the use of participatory action methodologies, such as photovoice, to define perceptions of health and participation in health promoting activities for adults with intellectual disability; (2) identifying the impact of poverty on functional skill development for children with autism spectrum disorder; and (3) developing understandings of the shared occupations of parent-child dyads to support the development of dyad level intervention for children with developmental disability.

Home Departments: Kinesiology: Occupational Science

Major Professor: Karla Ausderau, PhD, OTR/L

Disciplines that I pull from in my research include: Occupational Therapy, Occupational Science, Human Development and Family Studies, Developmental Psychology, Public Health, and Sociology.

Articles that influenced my research: 

Barnes, C. (2002). “Emancipatory disability research”: Project or process? Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-3802.2002.00157.x

Dickie V, Cutchin MP, & Humphry R. (2006). Occupation as transactional experience: a critique of individualism in occupational science. Journal of Occupational Science, 13(1), 83–93 11p.

Durkin, M. S., Maenner, M. J., Meaney, F. J., Levy, S. E., DiGuiseppi, C., Nicholas, J. S., … Schieve, L. A. (2010). Socioeconomic inequality in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder: evidence from a U.S. cross-sectional study. PloS One, 5(7), e11551. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0011551

Price P, & Stephenson SM. (2009). Learning to promote occupational development through co-occupation. Journal of Occupational Science, 16(3), 180–186 7p.