Alumni Spotlight: Bri Guillory (Sargent ’23)

Working with Gender Diverse Individuals

Bri Guillory is a 2023 graduate of the BU OTD program with a special interest in care for transgender and gender diverse individuals. As their capstone project for the OTD program, Bri collaborated with AOTA on a multimodal toolkit for occupational therapy practitioners working with transgender and gender diverse individuals.

The toolkit can be accessed via the AOTA website, and includes a wide range of educational and reference materials. Their aim was for the toolkit to be truly multimodal, with a wide variety of different resources. These include occupational therapy comics, such as a guide to misgendering; a ten page glossary of gender inclusive terms; a instructional video about how to care for someone who has had gender affirming surgery; infographics about topics such as how to make a gender affirming environment for clients, and many, many more resources for practitioners. Bri and their student collaborator also worked on thirteen documents for AOTA that can be accessed via the web page, which cover a variety of topics related to care of gender diverse individuals, such as mental health needs and power dynamics between therapist and trans and gender diverse clients. Additionally, with the assistance of another student, Bri organized three different webinars with LGBTQIA+ occupational therapists that can be accessed on the AOTA webpage. The first covered integrating information about gender diverse care within academia and curriculum, the second covered the medical model and caring for trans and gender diverse patients, and the third focused on gender affirming care across the lifespan.

For students and practitioners who are interested in getting involved with care for gender diverse individuals, Bri recommends using the AOTA toolkit resources as a starting point, and taking the time to learn about intersections of trans and gender diverse identity and race, as well as intersections with neurodivergence. They also suggest reaching out to LGBTQIA+ identified therapists to learn more about issues in the field and more about their personal experience, and  taking time to become familiar with recent journal articles on transgender and gender-diverse clients’ needs . Lastly, interested students may consider gaps in the current research as areas for their own study; for example, Bri suggested case studies or examples on caring for trans individuals, or assessments that don’t need to use binary or male/female options.

You can read more about Bri’s work on the AOTA website.