girls doing group activity

Recreational therapy student starts Girls on the Run chapter

Recreational therapy student Gabrielle Savidge returned to her former elementary school in Bellmawr, NJ, to start a local chapter of the Girls on the Run program, thanks to fundraising and support from the Girls on the Run Central NJ Scholarship Fund. More than 50 girls from Bellmawr Park and Ethel M. Burke elementary schools have completed the program, which builds confidence, life skills, and healthy habits through group activities and running. Once a week, Savidge meets with the group to talk about topics like conflict resolution, positive self-talk, and discovering one’s i...
Students
Recreational Therapy
Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
Community

Improving employment and transit options for people with ASD

It can be a giant step toward greater independence when young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities find employment. But research has shown that up to 85 percent of people with these challenges face unemployment. Matching people with the right employment—jobs where they can thrive—is an important part of the answer. Helping them commute successfully to work by themselves is another. Beth Pfeiffer, associate professor of occupational therapy and a researcher in Temple’s Collaborative on Community Inclusion, has been exploring both of these ways to improve...
Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
Transportation
people sitting

Review finds common pitfalls in post-hospital care for people with SMI

Successfully easing back into the commotion of everyday life is challenging for people discharged from hospitals. For people with serious mental illness (SMI), like schizophrenia or major depression, the period immediately after discharge can be a high-risk moment for homelessness, unemployment and loneliness. Absence of well-coordinated care after discharge often leads to a return trip to the hospital. “The phenomenon is common in many chronic conditions, but especially for people with SMI,” says Yaara Zisman-Ilani, an investigator at Temple’s Collaborative on Communit...
Mental Health
Collaborative on Community Inclusion
Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
Social and Behavioral Sciences
breastfeeding

On the news: Complications from a rising premature birth rate

Premature birth, when a mother gives birth before the 37th week of pregnancy, is a leading cause of infant mortality and can have significant, long-term health consequences for the newborn infant. Between the years 2007 and 2014, the rate of premature or “preterm” birth in the United States steadily declined. However, according to recent statistics, the United States’ premature birth rate increased to 9.93 percent of all births in 2017, marking the third year in a row the national premature birth rate has risen. According to research from the Centers for Disease Control...
Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
Maternal health
people sitting

Parents with mental illness more likely to have contact with Child Protective Services, study finds

Previous research shows that contact from Child Protective Services (CPS) can have significant, long-term implications for children and their parents. Children who are involved with the child welfare system have been shown to face poorer mental health, developmental and social outcomes. According to a new study published in Psychiatric Services from Temple’s Collaborative on Community Inclusion, adults with severe mental illnesses are estimated to be parents at almost the same rate as adults without mental illness; however, parents with a mental illness are much more like...
Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
Social and Behavioral Sciences
football

On the News: Physical Therapy takes on Super Bowl LIII

The Super Bowl is a once-a-year event that provides endless material for commentators and fans to dissect. As Super Bowl LIII stretched into its final quarter on Sunday, it seemed to have been unanimously declared “the most boring Super Bowl ever,” with a final score of 13-3 making it the lowest-scoring championship match in professional football history. Rather than rehash what made the game so boring—Twitter users have taken care of that!—we asked members of our physical therapy faculty to tell us what caught their eye while watching a game that so often leaves players...
Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
people sitting

'Circles' could offer promising outcomes after incarceration for people with serious mental illness

In the United States, adults with a serious mental illness make up a disproportionate number of inmates in prisons. While an estimated 10.4 million American adults have a serious mental illness—4.2 percent of the general population—people with a serious mental illness comprise 16 percent of the prison population. To address the unique needs of individuals with mental illness and a history in the justice system, investigators at the Temple University Collaborative on Community Inclusion have devised a program that would support people with serious mental illnesses after t...
Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
Social and Behavioral Sciences
people standing

OT student group raises more than 30 boxes of toys for Shriners

Earlier this month, the Student Occupational Therapy Association (SOTA) brought holiday cheer to children in Shriners Hospitals for Children with a donation of gift boxes filled with toys, arts and crafts supplies, and more. Occupational therapy students Hannah Sternbach, Megan Arcangel, Remy Binder, Brittany Bowles, Sarah Daley, Lindsay Godshalk, Erin Kennedy, Meaghan Kennedy, Tyler MacDonald, Jessica Walker and Julia Wallace organized the drive, filling 35 boxes of gifts for the patients at Shriners. “The staff was very appreciative and knew that these toys would make...
Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
crowd

In overwhelming environments, noise-canceling headphones may improve participation for children with autism

Beth Pfeiffer, associate professor of rehabilitation sciences, recently published research examining how children with autism who suffer from noise sensitivity respond to the use of noise-attenuating, or noise-canceling, headphones. In the article, which appeared this fall in Physical & Occupational Therapy in Pediatrics, Pfeiffer and her co-investigators describe study participants’ positive response to using headphones and reported that while wearing headphones, children with autism were better able to participate in community settings that might be otherwise overwhelm...
Health and Rehabilitation Sciences

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