CPERL Building OT Capstone Readiness

Introduction

We highlight our CPERL lab member, Lilyanna (Lily), who has helped to pioneer a new pathway in our lab towards becoming a research-engaged practitioner.

Lily was initially recruited through the UIC OT Children, Youth and Families scholarship of practice collaborative and co-mentored by Mary and Vivian. Lily's training in CPERL this past year has included building knowledge translation (KT) and project management skills. During onboarding, she developed a video about upgrades to the Young Children's Participation and Environment Measure (YC-PEM) that is now posted on the CanChild knowledge hub and is co-mentoring a lab member on another video under development. She has been involved in multiple projects including leading the High Value Intervention Research Group (HVEIRG) team meetings, managing over a dozen upgrades to culturally adapted versions of YC-PEM in collaboration with CanChild, preparing REDCap for a trial underway, and co-mentoring our newest lab member Annika. Most recently, Lily has embarked on submitting and having her first abstract accepted as a poster presentation at the 2025 International Society on Early Intervention conference in Portugal.

Lily's work provides an exemplar of how a research lab can contribute to preparing colleagues for research-engaged trajectories, as described in Dianna's OTD capstone, by creating opportunities to engage them as trainees in mentored experiences that dovetail with our research portfolio. Through Lily's completion of these mentored experiences, she has accessed meaningful resources and opportunities to build her readiness for designing and conducting a rigorous capstone project, to be co-mentored by Vivian and situated at Easterseals Academy Chicago to positively improve their process of care.