Body
Aster Harrison, PhD, wanted to be either a veterinarian or an occupational therapist. They grew up in Colorado Springs and went to Colorado State University, which had good programs in both fields. In addition to practical considerations, like excellent job security, Harrison, 33, went into occupational therapy in part because of their own experience with rehabilitation, both from a provider and recipient perspective.
Harrison did an internship during high school working with pediatric occupational therapists. “I was so impressed by their creativity and problem solving and how they focused on making the environment fit the client’s body instead of focusing on changing people’s bodies,” they said.
Harrison, who has had chronic pain since they were a teenager, also has experience as a rehabilitation patient. In their teens, Harrison traveled to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (now Shirley Ryan AbilityLab) for an intensive outpatient program. “This was part of the reason I decided to be an OT because the OTs I worked with at RIC were some of the first people to ask me, ‘well, what do you want to do?’ instead of what people had been telling me up until that point, which was, ‘if this is the part of your body that hurts, let’s do physical therapy on that part.’”
After graduating from Colorado State University where they majored in psychology and French, Harrison earned a master’s degree and then a doctorate in occupational therapy from the University of Illinois at Chicago. While at UIC, Harrison earned a Schweitzer Fellowship. The fellowship allowed them to focus on addressing health inequities in the Chicago area. Harrison co-founded an organization for LGBT refugees. “I learned so much at UIC about the importance of being invested and accountable to the communities you are researching,” says Harrison.
Harrison worked as an occupational therapist while they were a student at UIC, including at Presence (now Amita) Health and a therapeutic equestrian center in Chicago’s northern suburbs. As they were finishing their PhD, Harrison also taught a class on disability studies at the University of Chicago.
In 2021, after earning their PhD, Harrison became an assistant professor of occupational therapy at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia where they taught master’s level occupational therapy classes. “It was a hybrid program, and it was different because we had some unconventional students who were working full time or who were parents but could enroll in OT school because of the hybrid schedule,” Harrison says. “I really loved hybrid teaching, and I had a lot of control over the classes I taught and was able to infuse some disability studies and accessibility themes, which was great.”
But Philadelphia just wasn’t doing it for Harrison. “I was able to tick every box: I had a great job, I was renting a house I liked in a beautiful neighborhood, there was lots of hiking. Philly is a great place, but when I would go back to Chicago to visit, that’s where I really felt at home.”
Harrison started looking for jobs in the Chicago area and was connected with the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research by Jacqueline Kish, PhD, a CROR post-doctoral fellow who knew Harrison from when they were both students and collaborators at UIC. “Jacqueline told me about the need for people on their Rehabilitation and Research Training Center on Home and Community-Based Services, and I applied,” Harrison says. “HCBS is something I really believe in. People need to be allowed to live in the community.”
Harrison started with CROR as a research associate II earlier this year. They helped to organize and formalize processes related to the RRTC’s Advisory Council, which provides input and feedback on different research projects, including the development of person-centered HCBS outcome measures. “I’ve never worked with such a big research team,” Harrison says. “While we generally work remotely, I feel like I’ve really gotten to know my colleagues, and I like doing remote collaboration.”
Harrison’s tenure with CROR ended when they accepted a post-doc position at Aix-Marseille University in Marseille, France that started this fall. They will be working on a participatory action research project looking at psychiatric advance directives. They will help facilitate the development of these directives – sets of wishes for what people with mental illness would like to have happen when they are in a crisis – through trained peer workers. “So instead of involuntarily being medicated or hospitalized during a crisis, these advance directives will lay out what that person’s wishes are during a mental health crisis.”
While the research is a departure from home and community-based services, Harrison says that the person-centered focus of advance directives is a point of commonality between the two fields of research. “I feel like I was just settling into and enjoying my role with CROR, but this opportunity came up, and I even know French, so things just aligned,” Harrison says.