St. Kate’s Occupational Therapy Goes International for World Federation of Occupational Therapy conference

By Skylar Mattson

The World Federation of Occupational Therapy (WFOT) Congress was held in Bangkok, Thailand, from February 9th to 12th. WFOT holds an international conference every four years. The 2026 conference brought together around 3,000 people who represented over 100 countries. St. Kate’s had 8 faculty members from 3 departments and 4 occupational therapy students attend.

Faculty at WFOT group selfie. Credit: Kimberly Persons

Faculty in attendance were Jenny Hutson (occupational therapy), Kim Persons (occupational therapy), Kristi Haertl (occupational therapy), Melanie Homan (occupational therapy), Kristen Maisano (OTA), Kate Barlow (OT-Bridge), Jennifer Biggs (physical therapy), and Ambria Crusan (nutrition and dietetics). These members presented posters on a variety of topics, including St. Mary’s Medical and Rehabilitative Therapies Clinic’s mental health care, learnings from writing a book for occupational therapy, and the impact of interprofessional education on students’ learning. Some members also delivered oral presentations on topics such as the impact of AI on the next generation of occupational therapists and occupational therapy and health bereavement.

Elephant Bathing. Credit: Kimberly Persons

To learn more about occupational therapy practice in Thailand, Persons and Homan participated in the Thailand post-WFOT congress tour sponsored by the WFOT and hosted by the past president of WFOT, Marilyn Patterson. During this tour, the pair got to visit a university with an occupational therapy program, industrial and community rehab centers, and an elephant sanctuary where they got to assist in the elephants’ activities of daily living by assisting with their bathing. They also enjoyed taking a cooking class.

Haertl had the opportunity to support a recent St. Kate’s OT graduate, Ruh Lucas, as she was the second author on Ruh’s presentation on gender non-conforming individuals and their experience with the health care system. Haertl shared, “I would say that St. Catherine University had a tremendous presence at WFOT. Several friends and colleagues from much larger universities around the world mentioned to me their amazement of the footprint we had at the Congress.”

Hutson with 2 of her research students. *Credit: Jennifer Hutson*
From left to right: Jenny Hutson, Emma Heverly, and Valerie Parker

Hutson also supported some St. Kate’s OT students by co-presenting 2 posters, one with a recent St. Kate’s OT graduate, Melody Minea on the results of her master's thesis, and the other with two current St. Kate’s OT students, Emma Heverly ’27 and Valerie Parker ’26, on the preliminary findings of a study looking at the sleep context of children with limited mobility globally.

Heverly and Parker were sponsored by a professional grant through St. Kate’s to go to Thailand to be able to present their work with Hutson. A key learning from the conference for Parker was “what OT is like in other countries. For example, I learned about how the people who are going for OT school in South Africa have to work for the government for a year before they are able to do practice.” Heverly recalled an inspiring speaker who shared about Thailand’s lack of occupational therapists. Heverly explained, “I think we as a country are going to approach that someday. We have an aging population. Birth rates are stagnating. Someday, we are going to have a few OTs and a lot of people who need help, and I think hearing this approach to using local volunteers and training them and having them kind of network out and take care of basic rehab stuff was pretty insightful.”

While in Thailand, the pair also enjoyed eating authentic foods, such as rice noodle bowls and fried crab curry, visiting local malls, and taking a tuk-tuk tour for sightseeing. They both encourage students to attend professional conferences to make connections and learn new ideas from different people and places. Heverly stated, “I don’t think you go to a conference to learn exactly one type of technique. It’s more to feel inspired by [the] directions you can go.”