Dr. Aaron Dallman, PhD, OTR/L is a licensed occupational therapist and translational social scientist with a research emphasis on improving the lives and wellbeing of children with intellectual/developmental disabilities and their families. Dr. Dallman employs a multi-informant and mixed-methods research approach to improve the quality of intervention throughout the treatment process, from improving measurement in developmental disabilities to developing innovative and community-driven treatment approaches. Dr. Dallman is particularly passionate about the role of stakeholder and community-driven feedback in the development of interventions. Through their work as an occupational therapist, Dr. Dallman was surprised at how many interventions are regularly mentioned in the literature but are deemed harmful or unnecessary by those community members. Dr. Dallman aims to reduce this gap between community-preference and practitioner interventions with the ultimate goal of improving wellbeing for children with developmental disabilities and their families. Throughout their research, Dr. Dallman employs strengths-based and neurodiversity-affirming (Dallman et al, 2022) research methods to both highlight autistic strengths and identify meaningful treatment targets. For example, Dr. Dallman has published extensively on two important treatment targets: behavioral inflexibility (e.g., Bodfish et al., 2022; Harrop, Dallman et al., 2021) and executive function (Jones, Dallman, et al., 2021). Dr. Dallman also has a research interest in innovative philosophical approaches to understand humans’ participation and engagement in the world. He is particularly interested in embodiment theories and how they might help us better understand autistic experiences (e.g., Dallman & Triplett, 2020; Bailliard, Carroll, & Dallman, 2018).
Awards & Distinctions
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SHP Teaching Excellence Award
Each year the School of Health Professions, on behalf of the New Jersey Health Foundation, grants this award to a faculty member for outstanding effort in teaching and dedication to the education of our students during the academic year.
Courses
- Spring: Quantitative Research and EBP
- Fall: Pediatrics 1
- Fall: Pediatrics 2
- Directed Research 1, 2, and 3