From the Editor

I write this From the Editor during a week of extraordinary events. Today is the American Occupational Therapy Association’s (AOTA) National School Backpack Awareness Day. It is celebrated annually on the third Wednesday of each September. It is the longest running public health initiative in occupational therapy. Occupational therapy practitioners and students will help others Live Life To Its Fullest by providing education on how to properly choose, pack, lift, and carry backpacks. It is an engaging initiative that translates the evidence literature into meaningful education. I am happy to share that over the past 15 years, occupational therapy graduate students at Boston University have provided this outreach in the Boston community and that articles published in WORK have been used to create educational materials for this initiative.

The other extraordinary event is the Boston University College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College’s first-ever virtual conference called Health Matters, where nearly four dozen faculty, alumni, and graduate students will give 24 presentations on a broad range of health issues: obesity, nutrition, concussion management, child development, traumatic brain injury, rehabilitation science, arthritis, primary care, stuttering, among others. This initiative underscores how technology can be used to convey research, scholarship, education, and clinical practice on a global level. Health Matters will be recorded so check out the Sargent College website for more information: http://www.bu.edu/sargent/

Perhaps less extraordinary, but just as meaningful as the two events I just described, on a weekly basis I host the Sargent Choice Test Kitchen (SCTK) in my role as a Faculty-in-Residence at Boston University. I have been in this role for 11 years and this is where I met and work with Dr. Daryl Healea, the guest editor of the special section of this issue of WORK devoted to Faculty-in-Residence. My gratitude is extended to Dr. Healea for his leadership and dedication in sharing this important role of faculty in the living learning environments of educational institutions. I know you will find these articles fascinating.

The other 20 articles in this issue of WORK address important topics such as work-related musculoskeletal disorders in a variety of populations, home-based exercise in clients with a sub-acute stroke, static lifting capacity, employing people with mental health challenges, job stress and insomnia, vocational retraining options for workers with injuries, and work readiness tools for young adults with chronic conditions.

I encourage you to submit your manuscripts to WORK. We welcome your research, scholarly work, case studies, literature reviews and narratives. You could be the next author to advance that body of knowledge and have an impact in creating extraordinary initiatives.

As always, I welcome hearing from you.

Cheers,