GARY KIELHOFNER

GARY KIELHOFNER

1. Gary Kielhofner's Biography

   • Gary Kielhofner Studies
     • Gary trained in a seminary for 7 years to become a priest and studied psychology at the Saint Louis University. Later he studied Occupational Therapy at the University of Southern California. In 1975 he obtained his Master's degree in Occupational Therapy from the University of Southern California, followed in 1980 by a Doctor of Public Health degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. He received three honorary doctorates from top universities in the United States and Europe (e.g., Philadelphia University of Health Sciences (Pennsylvania), Queen Margaret University of Scotland and Linköping University (Sweden).
     • Contributions, books and awards
       • He had a dream to evolve the discipline of occupational therapy to support people with chronic health conditions and disabilities to live fulfilling and meaningful lives. His dream became a reality when he created the Model of Human Occupation, also known as MOHO. This model explains how to stimulate, simulate and execute occupations in everyday settings drawing heavily on behavioral and social science to explain motivation and choice, while emphasizing the importance of a person's ability to create meaning through action. The model deals with volition, habituation and performance capacity. He worked as a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, and at Boston University. In 1986 he built and was the chairman of the Department of Occupational Therapy at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) becoming one of the best programs in the world. He published his first book in 1983 Health Through Occupation and since then he published 19 books, over 140 articles in professional journ
   • Gary Kiehofner was born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri on February 15, 1949, and he died on September 2, 2010. When he was a child, his grandmother lost a leg in a car accident. She didn’t have a prosthesis and spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair, this was something that marked Gary and made him realize how the lack of capabilities or limitations of the same can condition life, to the point of altering the habits and routines of the people.