Evidence-based health promotion practice in occupational therapy

This unit examines the key theory, frameworks and practical approaches used in contemporary health promotion and occupational therapy practice to address health inequalities, prevent illness and injury, and promote health and wellbeing.
You will examine a range of health promotion strategies, their strengths, limitations, and application in clinical care and community settings for occupational therapy. Through a focus on empowerment, participation and capacity-building, you will develop skills for working with individuals and community networks to facilitate health promotion action. You will be introduced to qualitative and quantitative methodologies by conducting and evaluating survey questionnaire-based research and semi-structured interviews.
You will develop the skills necessary to critique and evaluate research evidence to inform the design, development, and implementation of evidence-based health promotion programs for occupational therapy practice. You will also be introduced to methods of presenting empirical evidence, generating research questions, selecting, and implementing appropriate qualitative and quantitative survey designs, completing data collection, analysis, interpretation, and reporting of results.
Specifically, you will learn the fundamentals of conducting quantitative and qualitative survey research. This will provide you with the foundational skills to integrate clinically relevant evidence into health promotion implementation in occupational therapy practice.