Jasin Wong: Using Research to Help People with Disabilities Find Jobs and Live Independently

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When Jasin Wong was growing up in Taiwan, she frequently had attacks of serious stomach pain. Her father would rush her to an emergency room or a physician’s office but the doctors could never figure out the cause. “It was a very scary experience but I got a lot of support and comfort from healthcare providers,” she says. By the time Wong was in high school, she wanted to be one of those comforting people but she wasn’t sure what kind of work she would be best suited for. She visited a lot of hospitals and saw the close relationship that many occupational therapists had with their clients. That appealed to her. “Occupational therapists help patients get back to their lives. They see what people’s abilities are. They don’t just see a disease and try to ‘cure’ it,” Wong says. “They see the person in a different way, what people are still able to do.”

Wong received her undergraduate degree in occupational therapy from National Taiwan University in 2005 and then worked as an occupational therapist for three years. She was passionate about her work, especially the two years she spent as a school-based therapist working with students with autism spectrum disorder. She became convinced that with the right support systems, many of them could get jobs and do well but that wasn’t the path that would be open to most of them. Taiwan didn’t have much in the way of community-based support for people with disabilities so few of her students would be able to live independently. “I didn’t know how to fix that,” she remembers.

Wong went back to National Taiwan University for a master’s degree in occupational therapy. She decided she wanted to research the barriers involved in transitioning from school to adulthood for students with disabilities, and for that, the United States was the best place. With only one previous trip to the U.S. under her belt and no relatives in the country, Wong moved to Boston and began work on a PhD at Boston University. In her dissertation, she explored how to help young people with autism spectrum disorder move from high school to employment. Her conclusion: “With enough environmental support, most of them can successfully be employed. If their coworkers and employers understand their special needs they have very strong potential to succeed.”

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After receiving her doctorate in 2019, Wong was selected for a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research (CROR) at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. Her timing was fortuitous: CROR had recently received a five-year grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) to study barriers to employment for people with disabilities. Wong loves her work at CROR, especially the fact that she is operating as an independent researcher while being surrounded by colleagues who count on her experience and knowledge. “My heart is in research,” she says.

“Jasin is a pleasure to work with. Her intellectual curiosity is infectious,” says her mentor Linda Ehrlich-Jones, PhD. “I look forward to watching her grow and develop over her post-doctoral fellowship.”

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Despite her success, it’s been difficult for Jasin to be away from her relatives and friends in Taiwan for so long. The first several years adjusting to speaking and studying in another language were particularly hard, she says, but she is proud to be the first person in her family to receive a master’s degree and a PhD. Her parents “respect my decision and are really happy I got a degree but they continuously worry about my situation, especially now during COVID-19,” Wong says. “We schedule weekly calls to catch up and make sure we are all happy.”