Ms. Hiba Saad is an Occupational Therapist at ACPN Dubai. She holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from Saint Joseph University of Beirut, alongside a Bachelor’s degree in Occupational Therapy from the Lebanese University. She is a licensed OT in Lebanon and the UAE’s DHA. 

In this blog, I would like to share how my journey led me to the CO-OP approach, my personal experience attending the WFOT Congress 2026 and connecting with the global CO-OP community, what it meant to witness its growing international presence, and how the conversations within the ICAN community reinforced the importance of occupation-focused and evidence-based practice.

I have always been a curious person; the kind who asks questions and rarely feels satisfied with the first answer. Throughout my clinical journey as an Occupational Therapist and Clinical Psychologist, I often wondered whether my clinical approaches were truly the “best way” to support the clients and families I serve.

Coming from a region where the biomedical paradigm is still widely reflected in occupational therapy practice, much of the focus remains on improving isolated functions with the expectation that gains in underlying skills will eventually translate into better occupational performance. Throughout much of my early clinical experience, I often questioned whether this pathway truly captured the essence of our profession.

That perspective began to shift in 2019, when I was first introduced to occupation-focused interventions such as the Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) approach through visiting Occupational Therapy lecturers from Canada, whose lectures challenged my existing assumptions and opened the door to a different way of thinking about intervention.

For the first time, I felt satisfied with the clinical reasoning behind an approach, that was client-centered, structured, and time-efficient. It respected the client’s goals while connecting brain and body, as well as linking strategy use to performance.

After completing my CO-OP certification in 2023, CO-OP fundamentally shifted how I think about occupational therapy. I started speaking about it often with colleagues, friends, and family, and even applying its principles to my own learning. Gradually, this shift in perspective also began to influence how I thought about the profession more broadly and what I wanted to stand for as a professional .

Yet conviction without community can be a lonely place. I found myself surrounded by colleagues doing good work but often feeling like I was speaking a different language when it came to occupation-focused practice. I realized that if I wanted this way of thinking to take root, I couldn't wait for change to come, I needed to help build it.

That is what led me to establish the first Occupational Therapy Working Group in the United Arab Emirates in November 2024, with the goal of bringing occupational therapists together, promoting evidence-based practice, and advocating for both the profession and the communities we serve. As the local community began to take shape, connecting with the broader world of occupational therapy professionals who have been walking this path longer and further was a natural next step in this journey. Attending the World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT) congress in February 2026 was a great opportunity to connect, learn and share experiences.

Nearly 2,500 occupational therapy practitioners, educators, researchers, and students from across the world gathered to share knowledge, research, and ideas shaping the future of our profession. And for me, one of the most affirming parts of the congress was witnessing CO-OP take the attention it deserved. Seeing CO-OP throughout the four days congress, with seven sessions exploring its application across diverse populations, including individuals living with Parkinson’s disease, stroke survivors, and autistic children, made me feel proud and connected. What was particularly inspiring was seeing the global expansion of CO-OP in research with scholars and clinicians from Denmark, Japan, Australia, UK, and Ethiopia sharing their work and reinforcing the growing international scholarship around the approach.

While the presentations across those four congress days were truly inspiring, there is something equally valuable that no program can fully capture: the conversations that happen in between. The breaks, the hallway exchanges, the spontaneous gatherings over coffee are often where the most energizing dialogues take place. It is in those unscheduled moments that ideas are tested, doubts are voiced, and connections are made that outlast the congress itself.

One such moment was the ICAN community meeting, where therapists, instructors, researchers, and clinicians came together not only to discuss the approach but to share their experiences, challenges, and passion for CO-OP. For someone who had spent years feeling like a lone voice advocating for occupation-focused practice in their context, walking into that room felt like finding a professional home,  a community within a community, where the language I had been speaking finally needed no translation.

Interestingly, I attended the meeting wearing two hats. As a member of the ICAN communications committee, I was there alongside my colleague Hiro, capturing the moment through pictures and notes, and in doing so, something became even more visible to me: what a network like this can truly become when people come together with purpose. At the same time, I was there as a clinician, witnessing firsthand the global impact that CO-OP has had on practitioners and scholars alike.

At the center of the discussions were important themes : the universality of the approach, questions of fidelity and implementation, and the ongoing need for advocacy for our clients, for families, and for the profession itself.  In that room, something more than a professional discussion was taking place: each person carries their own clinical experience, context and advocacy journey. But together, goals are set, obstacles are named, and through that process, growth follows naturally. And with growth comes the most an interesting outcome: belonging to a community that holds the same convictions, speaks the same language, and is working toward the same vision of what occupational therapy can be.

Clinicians from vastly different contexts, carrying vastly different experiences, find themselves aligned around the same convictions. There is something quite powerful about that, about realizing that the questions you have been sitting with alone are questions an entire global community has been asking together.

In a fast-paced world driven by digital transformation, “Inspiring Change, Innovating Futures,” was a fitting theme for a congress that showcased evolving research, new models of practice and the broader shifts reshaping global healthcare. Yet despite all that movement, what stays is the anchor. Because no matter how rapidly the world around us transforms, occupational therapists remain committed to the same essential foundation: that meaningful participation in everyday life is not a secondary outcome, it is the whole point.

To elevate our practice, then, is not only about embracing what is new. It is equally about remembering what has always been true. It means holding onto both: the heart of our profession (the belief that meaningful occupation is what makes us human). and the mind (the evidence-based rigor that ensures we are doing our best work in service of that belief). CO-OP is exactly that integration: purposeful, structured, client-centered, and deeply human. It connects mind and heart, strategy and meaning, the individual and their world. When we hold both together, when purpose guides our evidence and evidence serves our purpose, practice becomes more than a professional requirement. It becomes a way to elevate participation, empower clients, and strengthen who we are as a profession.

Because in the end Occupation matters. Evidence matters. implementation matters. And so does the community that keeps reminding us why.