Our blog post, Is there a difference between recreational therapy and activity programs?, is one of our most popular posts – often being in the top 5 posts! Both, recreational therapy (RT) and activity programs, can be very important for people with disabilities and older adults residing in skilled nursing, acute care, and group home settings, and for those living in the community. Recreational therapists and activity professionals provide recreational and leisure activities that help the people they serve reach their full potential.

NIDILRR supports recreational therapists, activity professionals, and the people they serve by funding research and development projects related to recreation and leisure. These projects include:

• The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Exercise and Recreational Technologies for People with Disabilities conducts research and development projects that span across the socioecological model from community to clinic to address a multilevel set of barriers to participation in healthful exercise and recreation among adults with physical disabilities. The Center focuses on several areas. Current and previous research and development projects have focused on a precision-based decision support tool to improve the quality of exercise and recreation recommendations and outcomes; a crowdsourcing platform for building accessible community-based exercise and recreation resources; and the advancement of a wheelchair accessible active video gaming controller to expand game play among users with physical disabilities.
• The Temple University Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (RRTC) on Community Living and Participation of People with Serious Mental Illness (TU Collaborative) advances the development of interventions, including recreation/leisure-related interventions, that maximize community living and participation of people with serious mental illness. Resources developed by the TU Collaborative include calendars, interventions, guides, and factsheets on recreation and leisure, welcoming communities, and physical activity.

NARIC’s information specialists searched REHABDATA for documents in our collection and found over 700 documents about recreation, leisure, and activities. If you would like to learn more about RT or activity programs or would like to find a recreation therapist or activity professional in your area, please contact NARIC’s information specialists via chat, phone, or email.

Please note: If you are interested in becoming accredited as a recreational therapist or activity professional, please contact the agencies mentioned in the original post.