These events are included with your AOTA INSPIRE 2027 registration so be sure to include them in your Boston schedule!
From general sessions that bring the whole OT community into one room, to morning wellness, dancing, and chances to give back, these are the shared moments that make INSPIRE feel like INSPIRE. No extra tickets needed. Just show up, connect, and leave with ideas and energy to carry home. Date and time details will be released soon!
A Renaissance of Purpose: Reawakening the Power of Occupational Therapy
Arameh Anvarizadeh, OTD, OTR/L, FAOTA, AOTA Board President
Occupational therapy is entering a pivotal era—one that calls us not simply to imagine what is possible, but to awaken to the power, purpose, and potential already within our profession. Join Arameh Anvarizadeh for her Presidential Address as she invites the occupational therapy community to embrace a renaissance fueled by courage, connection, innovation, and collective action. Together, we will explore what it means to reawaken our professional identity, amplify our voice, and boldly claim the spaces where occupational therapy can make a meaningful difference. This is a call to transform pride into advocacy, connection into collective power, and possibility into progress. The next chapter of occupational therapy is ours to create—together.
Announcement coming soon!
Our 2027 keynote speaker is almost ready for the spotlight. Stay tuned. This is one you won’t want to miss.
Disability Wisdom and the Work of Equity in Occupational Therapy
Khalilah R. Johnson, PhD, MS, OTR/L, FAOTA, Associate Professor, Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
What makes a life possible? Occupational therapy practitioners have long understood that occupation is fundamental to how people live, participate, and experience well-being. Yet participation is never determined by individual capacity alone. Social structures, environments, policies, relationships, and cultural expectations shape whose occupations are possible and whose are constrained. Drawing on occupational science, disability scholarship, and critical approaches to equity and justice, Khalilah Johnson invites the profession to reconsider what disability communities can teach us about access, interdependence, belonging, and participation. Rather than offering another framework, this Lela Llorens Lecture asks us to return to what occupational therapy already claims to value and listen differently to the people whose lives show where our practices fall short. The result is a challenge to practitioners, educators, researchers, and students to make equity part of how we see, listen, teach, practice, research, and act.
Engaging the Brain: Neuroscience as a Cornerstone of Occupational Therapy
Shelly Lane, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, Professor, Occupational Therapy, Colorado State University
What if understanding the brain could transform not just what we do as occupational therapy practitioners, but why we do it? This distinguished Slagle Award Lecture explores the powerful intersection of neuroscience and occupation, revealing how neuroplasticity and scientific knowledge can strengthen clinical reasoning and drive meaningful outcomes. Through compelling examples and reflections on the profession’s evolution, discover how neuroscience informs practice across the lifespan while keeping occupation at its core. Leave inspired to bridge the art and science of occupational therapy, deepen your understanding of the why behind your interventions, and embrace neuroscience as an essential cornerstone of practice.
Each year, AOTA and AOTF recognize and honor our colleagues who have made significant contributions to enrich the profession of occupational therapy. Feel the excitement and be inspired during this year’s engaging ceremony, as we publicly unveil the winners of AOTA’s and AOTF’s most prestigious awards. The Awards Reception is immediately after the ceremony.
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