Faculty and Staff
Research Assistant Professor
he/him/his
Division of Occupational Therapy
Occupational Therapy Doctorate Program
443D Atwell Hall
453 W. 10th Ave.
Columbus, OH 43210
Areas of interest
Health Systems & Services Research and “Glocal” Public Health on disability & rehabilitation disparities. Specific interests include:
- Geographic disparities in the access and quality of care, including in rural areas.
- Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatiotemporal analyses.
- Human Resources planning and development for underserviced locations.
- Stakeholder engagement and community-based service-delivery.
- Patient experience and user engagement in service development / quality improvement.
Overview
Dr. Jesus is an Occupational Therapist and Rehabilitation Services Researcher that aims to identify and tackle rehabilitation access and quality disparities. His scholarship focuses on the geographically underserved, such as disabled persons living in rural areas and/or low-resource settings - domestically and elsewhere. Overall, dr Jesus’s scholarship advocates for the global as well as local strengthening of rehabilitation systems of care. Approaches include spatiotemporal analyses, workforce development strategies, innovative service delivery, and stakeholder-engaged and community-based approaches. Dr. Jesus’s scholarship also focus on what it takes for rehabilitation services to be person-centered, and how to systematically use the patient’s voice (i.e., the patient experience feedback) for its continuous improvement.
Dr. Jesus’s research, training and improvement activities have been externally funded at the federal-agency level, by leading rehabilitation hospitals, or through the Veterans Administration, among others. Dr Jesus was awarded with a distinguished Switzer Research Fellowship from the National Institutes of Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research for mapping rural disparities in postacute therapy utilization. Partnering with the World Federation of Occupational Therapists, Dr Jesus led the research and consultation toward developing and refining the first-ever global strategy for strengthening the Occupational Therapy profession.
Dr. Jesus rapidly achieved over 50 international peer-reviewed publications, often as first or senior author, in major rehabilitation and public health journals, including in The Lancet, and his research had several recognitions (e.g., author interviews, featured articles). Dr Jesus also has been a federal Grant Reviewer, Associate Editor and Lead Guest Editor for major journals in his field.
With a global scholarship and network, Dr. Jesus has been an invited speaker internationally and mentored the research of graduate students, practitioners, or junior faculty from >10 countries, from high- to low-income. Dr. Jesus is passioned about building the capacity of mentees to become effective agents of change - in their own settings, communities, or countries.
Recent publications
- Jesus TS, Mani K, Bhattacharjya S, Kamalakannan S, von Zweck C, Ledgerd R, The World Federation of Occupational Therapists. Situational analysis for informing the global strengthening of the occupational therapy workforce. Int J Health Plann Manage. 2023;38(2):527-535. doi: 10.1002/hpm.3605. PubMed PMID: 36539680
- Kumurenzi A, Richardson J, Thabane L, Kagwiza J, Urimubenshi G, Hamilton L, Bosch J, Jesus TS. Effectiveness of interventions by non-professional community-level workers or family caregivers to improve outcomes for physical impairments or disabilities in low resource settings: systematic review of task-sharing strategies. Hum Resour Health. 2023 Jun 21;21(1):48. doi: 10.1186/s12960-023-00831-7. PMID: 37344907
- Jesus TS, Mani K, von Zweck C, Bhattacharjya S, Kamalakannan S, Ledgerd R. The Global Status of Occupational Therapy Workforce Research Worldwide: A Scoping Review. Am J Occup Ther. 2023 May 1;77(3):7703205080. doi: 10.5014/ajot.2023.050089.
Recent presentations
- Jesus TS. Symposium Coordinator: Telerehabilitation Technologies: From Development to Implementation, American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine’s Annual Conference 2023
- Jesus TS. Keynote speaker. Person-Centred Rehabilitation Model: what exactly does it mean in concept and in practice. Person-Centered Conference of the Danish Society of Neurorehabilitation, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2023.
- Kumurenzi A, Jesus TS. Understanding the functional needs of community-dwelling stroke survivors in Rwanda: prospective observational cohort study. World Stroke Congress, Toronto, 2023
- Jesus TS, Keynote speaker. WFOT Session: Toward a Global Strategy for the strengthening of the Occupational Therapy human resources. WFOT Congress, Paris, France, 2022.
Awards and honors
- 2024 Lead Guest Editor. Int J Health Plann and Manage (Wiley), UK.
- 2023 Distinguished Research Fellowship: US National Institute of Disability Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research.
- 2021-current, Association Editor, Section Human Resources for Health, Int J Health Plann and Manage (Wiley), UK.
- 2020 Guest Editor, Special Issue: “Global Rehabilitation Workforce, Policy, and Innovation”, Int J Environ Res Public Health (MDPI), Switzerland
- 2019, Elite Reviewer Award, Arch Phys Med Rehabil; contribute of “extraordinary magnitude and quality”, attributed to the top 2% reviewers of the journal.
Education
- 2021-2023, Post-Doctoral Fellowship (PDF), Health Services & Outcomes Research, Institute for Public Health and Medicine, Northwestern University, USA
- 2020-2021, Post-Professional Occupational Therapy Doctorate (PP-OTD), Sargent College, Boston University, USA
- 2009-2013, PhD, Health Psychology, Medical School, Universidad Miguel Hernández, Spain
- 2002-2006, Entry-Level, 4-year Occupational Therapy degree, School of Health, Oporto Polytechnic Institute