Life Hacks and Gadgets project

Over six million people living in Canada have arthritis, making it one of the most common chronic conditions. The condition significantly impacts activities of daily living, workplace participation, and it is the leading cause of disability. Living with arthritis leads to pain and physical impairments and people with arthritis can self-identify as living with a disability. When impairments are combined with the lack of accessibility, people with arthritis must adapt activities of daily living and other tasks. Over 70% of persons with disabilities reported that they had experienced 1 or more of the 27 types of barriers to accessibility. Often, assistive devices (ADs) are used as well as simple and practical tips (“life hacks”) to address these limitations and barriers. To address these challenges, the Canadian Arthritis Patient Alliance (CAPA) has worked with five Occupational Therapy students from McMaster University’s Department of Rehabilitation since 2023. These students have conducted a literature identify evidence about assistive devices and arthritis, conducted a survey about the use of assistive devices in daily life, completed interviews with people with arthritis where they shared how they live life well with arthritis and a Photovoice project to bring community knowledge further to the forefront by identifying innovative adaptive strategies or devices, personal accommodations, and coping mechanisms that help people with arthritis live independently. The Mitacs funding will enable us to synthesize all of the available evidence in a way that is useful for patient decision making and design an appropriate website or other layout to communicate the evidence to the patient community.

Faculty Supervisor:

Rebecca Gewurtz

Student:

Partner:

Canadian Arthritis Patient Alliance

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Retail trade

University:

McMaster University

Program: