Maud Graff appointed as professor of Occupational Therapy

11 September 2018

Maud Graff has been appointed as professor (by special appointment) of Occupational Therapy at RadboudUMC and Radboud University with effect from the 1st of September 2018. The chair – the first in the Netherlands - is financed by the Dutch Occupational Therapy Association ‘Ergotherapie Nederland’.

Maud Graff is a senior researcher at the department of Rehabilitation and IQ healthcare and honorary associate professor at the University of Nottingham. The focus of her research is on development, implementation and evaluation of evidence-based complex person-centered occupational therapy and interdisciplinary allied healthcare, rehabilitation and psychosocial interventions. The targt groups are people with cognitive, physical, and psychosocial problems, which are a result of chronic disease, impairment, disability or age. She studies these person-centered interventions in primary, hospital and rehabilitation/nursing home care (chain of care). The aim of these interventions is to improve and maintain self-reliance, self-management and participation in meaningful daily and social activities, to improve well-being, quality of life and health of these people and their caregivers/social networks.

Person-centered occupational therapy

Maud Graff (Roermond, 1967) studied Occupational Therapy at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and Health Sciences at Maastricht University, where she received her MSc degree in 1993. In 2008 she obtained her PhD – with honors - from Radboud University on her research into the effectiveness and efficiency of person-centered occupational therapy for older people with dementia and their informal caregivers at home.
Since 1994, Graff has been working at the RadboudUMC, initially as an occupational therapist, junior researcher and lecturer, then as senior researcher and assistant professor and since 2014 as Junior Principal Investigator. In 2015, she was appointed Honorary Associate Professor at the Division of Rehabilitation and Elderly at the University of Nottingham, especially for her person-centered intervention approach and her methodological experience in the development, implementation and evaluation of complex interventions in the elderly.

Seven Science Awards

Maud has received seven Science Awards, including for her innovative research into the development, implementation and evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of a person-centered community occupational therapy program for older people with dementia and their informal caregivers (EDOMAH program). This program was published as book in Dutch, French and Italian language and is also translated in English.  She lectures on this program and on the methodology of developing, implementing, and evaluating complex person-centered interventions in national and European master courses. She is active in several (inter)national occupational therapy and interdisciplinary research, educational and societal networks. She performed many research projects on national and international grants she received. Graff published about hundred articles in scientific (inter)national journals, several books and book chapters.

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