Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals including occupational therapy practitioners (OTPs) were required to transition to working utilizing an online-service delivery model called telehealth. The use of telehealth for occupational therapy (OT) sessions was limited prior to the pandemic, and this shift required OTPs to provide services in ways many had never experienced. The purpose of this study was to identify how the transition to telehealth impacted OTPs and their ability to provide proper care to the pediatric population via telehealth. The final analytic sample included 32 female OTPs who worked with the pediatric population. Results from qualitative and quantitative analyses showed that OTPs had positive feelings toward using telehealth and that the telehealth modality had a moderate impact on their job performance. The areas that pediatric OTPs want to be addressed included technology and internet issues, lack of parent involvement, decreased quality of care, inaccessibility of materials, decreased attention span and increased distractions, and lack of general knowledge about telehealth among clients, parents, and professionals. Despite these drawbacks, a positive theme emerged that the telehealth model is good for current circumstances. The results show telehealth is a positive experience for OTPs and allows OT to be more accessible to their clients. Implications for increasing education for healthcare professionals, clients, and parents/guardians to make telehealth accessible to clients on a large scale are discussed.

Flora Vita is a digital platform that connects families to outdoor excursions, programmed activities and local events, encouraging the familial ecosystem to flourish within Arizona's vast environment. We curate unique opportunities that allow families to cultivate internal relationships with one another and form relationships with local like-minded families in pursuit of a healthy lifestyle.

Graduating from college is an important time of life transitions and career development for undergraduates and their future. Future self-identification, the connection between an individual’s current and future self, can negatively predict depression and utilize self-control as a mechanism to achieve later academic goals. Investigating an individual’s future self- identification, depression scores, and behavioral outcomes in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic can help optimize college graduate success in an uncertain world. The present study aimed to (1) determine if earlier future self-identification moderated the changes between later outcomes (e.g., depression, perceived alcohol consumption, and academic and career goals) from pre-COVID-19 to during COVID-19, (2) investigate if psychological resources (e.g., self-control and emotion regulation) had any intermediary effects between earlier future self-identification and later depression and behavioral outcomes during the pandemic, and (3) test for any moderation effects of future self-identification on the relationship between available psychological resources before COVID-19 and during COVID-19. The present research demonstrated that students with greater earlier future self-identification were less likely to change their academic and career goals and were less likely to experience symptoms of depression during the pandemic. Additionally, self-control was demonstrated as an intermediary factor between earlier future self-identification and later academic and career goal changes. These findings may help college graduates develop resilience in other stressful situations.

As the COVID-19 pandemic globally altered the way education was accessed by students and facilitated by teachers. Educators understand the importance of students engaging in the learning experiences to promote achievement. In this paper, we address the following objectives: (1) provide a conceptualization of student engagement from the perspective of teachers, students, and families, (2) identify the factors that influence student engagement, (3) identify the distinctions and similarities between in-person and virtual learning, and (4) recommend practices to increase student engagement during virtual learning. Research plans were to collect data in Oujda, Morocco and Arizona, USA to examine educational experiences in two different contexts. In this paper, we present data from the Oujda participants. Results indicated various levels of students’ emotional, behavioral, and cognitive engagement due to factors involving technology, supervision, motivation, and teacher pedagogy. Results reflected various perspectives of teachers, students, and parents regarding student engagement, yet all the perspectives indicated that engagement and preference is higher for in-person learning than virtual learning.

As restrictions regarding the COVID pandemic began to be enforced in March 2020, the first celebrity announced they had tested positive. It was Tom Hanks. An American cultural icon and a household name in the United States since his role as Forrest Gump in the movie Forrest Gump (1994). My family loves all his movies, especially Big (1988), and I found myself concerned for his health like he was my family. Every time there was an update on social media or the news, I held my breath for the other foot to drop. When my parents told me that Hanks was getting better, I breathed a sigh of relief. I heard many other pandemic stories like those of President Donald Trump, American singer-songwriter Pink, and NBA player Rudy Gobert. However, I realized that I didn’t hear enough about how my community experienced this global pandemic. I wanted to know how the people I used to see all the time navigated the health issues, isolation, financial stress, and other issues that arose, and more specifically, I wanted to know how their beliefs had helped them navigate the crisis. The purpose of this project is to share the Covid-19 stories of ordinary people across ages and genders—from high school students to college students, parents to grandparents. While no one person experienced it the same way as another, there were common themes across the narratives of the 8 people that I interviewed, namely, their reliance on their Christian faith during these times of uncertainty and fear. My interviews with participants lasted roughly thirty minutes, and I always started with the initial question, “what was your initial reaction to COVID?” I would then follow up by asking the participant how Covid-19 impacted their life. How did it impact their education, career, family, and community? I asked what challenges arose and what opportunities or good came to them during this time. I also asked participants what they learned about God and how they grew over the past few years. Each participant shared with me a quote, verse, or lyric they held onto, used as a source of strength, or represents a theme of their life during that time (you will see these written as epigraphs for the stories). Rather than merely collecting and publishing their interviews, I wanted to transform their experiences into literary narratives, so I turned to a practice called art-based research (ABR), a practice that involves the translation of fieldwork (and interview) into creative art forms. ABR addresses research in more engaged ways, and it allows us to share information in more culturally appropriate ways. By using ABR, this collection of Covid stories will engage and appeal more to a general audience. The resultant collection of nine narratives revealed strong themes of faith and family. Each narrative gave light to how the pandemic was hard and/or fruitful for the participants’ relationships with God and relationships with their families. The five participants who were 25 and under rendered additional themes of community and isolation while the four who were 26 and up rendered additional themes of emotional and mental health. The six female participants rendered additional themes of education and community while the three male participants rendered additional themes of politics and self-improvement. It is important to note that four of the five participants who are 25 and under are female while the group of 26 and up were half female and half male. Also important to note is that four of the six female participants were 25 and under while two of the three male participants were 26 and up. Thus, the small number of participants does not allow the research to apply broadly to any group outside the study. I hope that this project unifies the American experience of COVID as well as highlights the differences that make each story special. The history books will hone in on the generic and standard research studies will focus on the numbers, but projects like this provide a layer of humanity to the history we will tell future generations. I also hope that in the more immediate future, this project will serve today’s generations well in processing the trauma and grief that occurred during these last few years as well as render empathy for one another.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the pandemic’s effect on the psychosocial and physical quality of life of children with and without classic galactosemia and their parents in the Babble Boot Camp. The Babble Boot Camp within ASU’s Speech and Hearing Genetics Lab provides early intervention speech therapy for children with classic galactosemia (CG), evaluating their speech progress as well as other metrics related to stress and quality of life. In this study, the Quality of Life questionnaire (Varni, 1998) was used to measure how three pandemic stages (pre-pandemic, intense-pandemic, post intense-pandemic) affected the entire participant population, those with CG children compared to typically developing, and each family member (father vs. mother vs. child). These factors were combined within an integrated regression model to see driving factors and correlations within responses. The main results were that the pandemic itself did not have a significant effect, but there was quite a significant impact on psychosocial health when comparing affected vs unaffected groups. Evaluating an integrated regression model with the consideration of all three pandemic phases, the results show that the factor driving group differences over time was the affectation of the participant for psychosocial health and family member for physical health. When looking at just pre-pandemic and intense pandemic phase, both models in their entirety were significant, showing that all predictors (affectation, pandemic phase, and family member) drove health differences. Lastly, the findings of the study show that there were significant correlations between the health scores of fathers, mothers, and children throughout the different stages of the pandemic.

The coronavirus pandemic has proven to be a challenging time for the Hispanic community, facing impacts on stress and depression symptoms at disproportionate rates. The current study examined the associations between socioeconomic COVID stressors and depression symptoms; and coping styles, including problem-focused and emotion-focused coping, and depression symptoms amongst Mexican heritage parents. Coping styles were also examined as a moderator of the association between socioeconomic COVID stressors and depression symptoms