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, is dedicated to promoting community living and participation for people with disabilities. Her work also explores how concepts from disability studies can enhance occupational therapy education.
Lee earned her PhD in Disability Studies from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). During her time at UIC, she co-founded the . The network aims to build a community that creates and shares knowledge by integrating disability studies into occupational therapy. “Our vision is to foster a critically reflective and socially responsive profession,” says Lee. “We believe the best way to do that is by bringing disability studies perspectives into OT education, practice, and research.” The network supports this mission by offering educational workshops, learning modules, and resources for both students and educators.
After UIC, Lee did a postdoctoral fellowship in health services and outcomes research at Northwestern University. There, she worked with two important mentors: Allen Heinemann, PhD, director of the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research (CROR) at Shirley Ryan 国产色情, and Linda Ehrlich-Jones, PhD, RN, associate director of CROR.
Heinemann, who is also professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Northwestern, was her primary mentor. Lee also worked with Ehrlich-Jones, contributing to a project aimed at developing an app to support physical activity for people with Parkinson’s disease.
“Danbi was instrumental in creating a manual for the physical activity app for the Parkinson’s project. In addition, she has been a wonderful collaborator along with her students who write instrument summaries for the Rehabilitation Measures Database,” says Ehrlich-Jones, who is also a research professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Northwestern.
After completing her post-doctoral fellowship at Northwestern, Lee joined the University of Washington as an assistant professor in the department of rehabilitation medicine and is also a core faculty member in the disability studies program. In her new role, she built on her earlier research.
“I'm interested in stroke-related research, primarily about supporting community participation for people as they transition back to the community from rehabilitation after having a stroke,” says Lee.
Lee, now an associate professor, recently secured a National Institutes of Health R01 grant from the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research, to continue to expand a program she has worked on since her graduate studies at UIC: Improving Participation After Stroke Self-Management Program (IPASS). The grant will support a five-year, multi-site, randomized controlled trial to evaluate the program. IPASS is a group-based self-management intervention for people who have had a stroke that is led by an occupational therapist and a lay person with stroke. It is designed to improve their self-efficacy in managing their health and to enhance their participation in daily life activities.
Lee’s R01 funding will help to test IPASS in a telehealth format. “We’ve adapted it for delivery via Zoom to increase access and flexibility for stroke survivors re-entering the community,” she says.
At the University of Washington, Lee has begun to mentor up-and-coming students. She recently graduated her first PhD student, Melody Yang, PhD, OT, who is now a post-doctoral fellow at Northwestern University under the mentorship of Heinemann. “She's learning from the best at Northwestern,” says Lee. “I was really excited for her decision, which I think I had an influence on, having been Allen’s mentee, but I didn't want to make the decision for her.”