This Wednesday, you’re invited to attend a public talk by Professor Clare Hocking, New Zealand’s first professor of occupational science and therapy, from AUT University.

Humans are fundamentally occupational beings. Subsequently, occupational science and therapy play an increasingly important role in population health.

Professor Hocking will argue that an occupational perspective is vital to realising the World Health Organisation’s goals to combat the obesity crisis and respond to the needs of an aging population.

"Two fundamental shifts in our understanding of health challenge occupational therapists to expand their role into population health: evidence that health and illness are created by social determinants, and that the measure of health is what people do in their everyday lives,’ she says.

From familiar and mundane daily occupations such as going for a run or making a cup of tea to the impact of disability on occupational performance; occupation and global issues such as health, unemployment and an aging population are intrinsically linked.

Professor Hocking is a long serving academic in AUT University’s Department of Occupational Science and Therapy, where she has supervised 34 doctoral and masters students to completion. In 2006, Professor Hocking was honoured for her international research by the World Federation of Occupational Therapists. She is currently the editor in chief of the Journal of Occupational Science.