Dr. Wendy Coster

Dr. Wendy Coster is Professor and Chair of the Department of Occupational Therapy at Boston University's College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (Sargent College). Dr. Coster is also affiliated with the Health and Disability Research Institute at the Boston University School of Public Health. She received her professional preparation in occupational therapy at Boston University and completed a PhD in Psychology at Harvard University. Her clinical practice focus has been on school and other community programs serving children and youth with emotional, behavioral, and cognitive disabilities. Her primary research focus has been the development of assessments to guide service planning and evaluation for individuals with disabilities and to support outcomes research. Currently she is Director of the Patient/Clinician Reported Outcomes (PRO) Core of the Boston Rehabilitation Outcomes Measurement Center. Among the instruments she has helped to develop are the Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI) and its newly-revised and expanded version, the PEDI-CAT; the School Function Assessment (SFA); Late-Life Function and Disability Inventory; and the Activity Measures for Post-Acute Care (AM-PAC). Dr. Coster's most recent project, conducted in collaboration with investigators from CanChild, was the development of the Participation and Environment Measure for Children and Youth (PEM-CY), an instrument for children with and without disabilities suitable for use in population surveys.