The 2025 AOTF Planning Grant Collective, “Coaching in Occupational Therapy,” will be held in Alexandria, VA, on October 20-21, 2025.

The program will bring together occupational therapy leaders for a two-day workshop to clarify and advance the critical role coaching plays in occupational therapy. This meeting is a first step in developing collaborative teams that will continue to meet to create further action steps and projects, white papers, and new research grant proposals to move the profession forward in the area of coaching in occupational therapy to maximize client outcomes. 

The Foundation plans to convene one Collective a year. We believe this interdisciplinary approach to identifying essential research topics will result in critical new research in questions of great interest and opportunity for the OT profession.

Researchers Erika Kemp, OTD, OTR/L, BCP, and Jewel Crasta, PhD, OTR/L (pictured l-r below), from The Ohio State University’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, have recently received a $2.9 million grant from the Department of Defense’s Autism Research Program. The funding will further support their AquOTic lab, pioneering a scalable, evidence-based water safety program tailored for children on the autism spectrum. The pilot adaptive swim program was initially funded by a 2022 AOTF Intervention Research Grant (IRG). Recruitment for instructor training for the next phase of the program will begin in September 2025. You may read the full OSU article for more information.

AOTF 2025 Interview with Jewel Crasta, PhD, OTR/L

Initial Impact

How did the AOTF research grant specifically impact your ability to pursue further funding opportunities?
The initial funding from AOTF allowed us to establish AquOTic as a manualized and evidence-based intervention, providing the necessary resources for rigorous implementation and evaluation. This investment demonstrated proof of concept and positioned us to approach larger funders with preliminary data, feasibility results, and evidence of community impact. The pilot randomized controlled trial also allowed us to demonstrate our team's ability to conduct a rigorous clinical trial successfully and show the efficacy of the AquOTic program in improving water competency among children on the autism spectrum, along with caregiver-reported goals, which underscored our readiness to lead larger-scale trials.

What changes or developments within your organization were enabled by our funding, which, in turn, strengthened your position for follow-on grants?
With AOTF's IRG support, we developed intervention manuals, established treatment fidelity procedures, identified AquOTic's active ingredients, and established standardized training protocols. These developments built the foundation for intervention fidelity and scalability—key factors that strengthened our applications for federal grants.

The Follow-On Funding Process

Can you describe how you identified and pursued the subsequent funding opportunities?
We systematically reviewed funding mechanisms that aligned with our mission, focusing on autism intervention and community-based rehabilitation science. We targeted federal programs such as NIH that had a NOSI (Notice of Special Interest) on drowning prevention research, and DoD's Autism Research Program.

Specific Examples and Evidence

Could you share specific examples of how our funding helped you achieve results that were compelling to other funders?
Our ability to successfully recruit and provide the AquOTic intervention to over 37 children on the autism spectrum using a rigorous randomized control trial framework, and show significant improvements in children's water competency skills, provided compelling evidence of both efficacy and real-world applicability. We were able to show that the study interventionists achieved high treatment fidelity, which further strengthened our proposal to train community interventionists on AquOTic to ensure scalability. View swim safety tips for children with autism and at-home water safety activities.

What data, stories, or achievements resulting from our funding were particularly impactful in your follow-on grant applications? 

• We published clinical trial results showing significant improvements in children’s foundational water competency skills in Frontiers in Pediatrics (Kemp E, et al., 2024).
• The narrative of families who transitioned from being unable to access traditional swim lessons to having their child's unique needs met during AquOTic, with improvements in water safety and swim skills.

Lessons Learned

What lessons did you learn during the process of securing the follow-on funding, which you believe were influenced by your experience with our organization?
We learned the importance of conducting a rigorous pilot trial with standardized outcomes and family-centered narratives.

Are there specific resources, support, or guidance that our organization provided that were particularly helpful in your subsequent fundraising efforts?
The visibility and credibility gained through AOTF's IRG grant served as a critical endorsement when pursuing competitive grants.

Support early career OT research, donate, and/or apply to our Intervention and Implementation Research Grants now open. Letter of Intent due Sept. 19, 2025. 

The Occupational Therapy Journal of Research (OTJR), published by the American Occupational Therapy Foundation (AOTF), is proud to introduce a new Infographic Series—created to help bridge the gap between research and practice.

Click to open the full infographic!

These visually engaging, evidence-informed resources are designed to make core concepts in occupational therapy more accessible, shareable, and ready for implementation across various settings.

Whether you're supporting emotional regulation, promoting daily function, or working in emerging areas of occupational therapy (OT) practice, our infographics can serve as quick references, teaching tools, or conversation starters with clients, caregivers, students, and colleagues.

Our latest infographic highlights the Cognitive Orientation to Daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) approach—a client-centered, evidence-based intervention that empowers individuals to solve their own performance challenges. Rather than focusing on underlying components, CO-OP addresses meaningful occupation directly through cognitive strategy use and guided discovery. The "Goal-Plan-Do-Check" framework helps clients develop problem-solving skills that transfer to everyday life.

Download the CO-OP approach infographic and use it in your sessions, classrooms, or team discussions. This is just the beginning. We’ll continue adding more OTJR infographics to the AOTF website throughout the year—all grounded in occupational therapy research and designed to help you bring evidence to life in your daily work. Stay tuned—and thank you for helping us move OT research forward!