The Occupational Therapy Doctorate envisions an inclusive world where all people flourish through access to and participation in meaningful, health-supporting occupations, the activities of everyday life.
Joining with occupational therapy and occupational science communities internationally, as well as Duke University,
The aim of Duke Occupational Therapy Doctorate is to advance the health of individuals, organizations, and communities by skillfully enabling the occupations of everyday life.
The Duke OTD is built on these core beliefs:
- How people occupy time is a key ingredient in optimum health for everyone,
- Enabling engagement in occupation is the distinctive contribution occupational therapy makes to health and social care,
- Engagement in occupation supports health by fostering basic human needs of survival, capacities, meaning, identity, social connection, competence, and autonomy.
- Successfully engaging in occupations requires a just-right transaction of skills, capacities, experience, motivation, interest, meaning, social support, environmental press, cultural relevance, political legislation, economics, technology, and other factors.
- Occupational therapists optimize these transactions through assessing, adapting, advocating, collaborating, consulting, designing/building, educating, engaging, and applying specialty skills.
Our first OTD cohort began in the Fall of 2021.
Click here to apply to the Occupational Therapy Doctorate program. Email OTD_admissions@duke.edu with any questions.