Occupational Therapist Builds Community Through Meaningful and Collective Occupation
Lauren Hughes, an occupational therapist from Maryland, is transforming community mental health by using meaningful occupation to foster connection, dignity, and belonging.
Lauren Hughes, OTR/L
Mental Health Clinical Specialist, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Location: Maryland
Certified in 2011
Building Relationships Through Meaningful Occupation
As a mental health occupational therapist working in the psychiatry program at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Lauren Hughes provides community-based occupational therapy services that support individuals with complex mental health conditions. She helps her clients build the skills and routines needed to live independently and participate fully in their daily life. She believes that meaningful occupation can transform individual lives and strengthen communities. Preparing a meal, organizing a closet, shopping for clothes, or celebrating a milestone may seem like ordinary, everyday tasks, but Lauren knows these moments provide opportunities to build confidence, deepen relationships, restore dignity, and foster a sense of belonging.
Lauren’s approach to occupational therapy begins with relationships. Her goal is to ensure that her clients feel seen, valued, and supported; her focus is on the person and not only their diagnosis. This mindset has made a profound difference for the clients she serves, including one client with a severe and persistent mental illness who experienced repeated hospitalizations and had difficulty consistently connecting with other healthcare providers. Lauren regularly showed up for this client, using shared activities, structured routines, and meaningful occupations grounded in clinical reasoning to gradually build trust. The impact became clear when the client shared that during moments when hallucinations urged him to harm himself, he resisted because he knew “my OT Lauren would want me to be well.” For the client’s 100th therapy visit, Lauren marked the milestone in a way that embodied her care philosophy. She designed a baking session incorporating a mindfulness exercise where she and the client counted out 100 chocolate chips prior to mixing the ingredients and baking the cookies as part of the intervention. The activity celebrated perseverance while addressing executive functioning skills, sensory processing, and social participation.
To Lauren’s colleague and award nominator, this commitment to her client reflected the power of occupational therapy:
“Lauren was not trying to ‘fix’ a diagnosis. She was preserving a life, restoring dignity, and sustaining a man’s connection to hope and community living.”
Megan McGowan, OTR/L
Award nominator
Building Community Through Collective Occupation
Lauren has never viewed occupational therapy as limited to a treatment room. This outlook led her to create the “Pop Up and Take” free shop, a monthly community resource that turns donated clothing into meaningful therapeutic opportunities. Clients take part in every step of the process, from collecting donations and laundering clothing to organizing displays, making signs, managing inventory, and welcoming shoppers. Through each task, clients practice executive functioning, emotional regulation, communication, vocational readiness, and daily living skills through real-world occupations. Facility staff and clinicians across all departments also participate by donating clothing, volunteering, and shopping as part of the community.
What began as a free shop has become a living example of collective occupation, bringing people together through a shared experience rooted in dignity, connection, and purpose.
The impact of “Pop Up and Take” reaches beyond practical skill-building: clients preparing for job interviews shop for professional clothing in a supportive and trusted space; young adults with limited income select holiday gifts for family members; and individuals exploring identity find a welcoming space for self-expression.
Lauren continues to adapt the shop to meet community needs, starting a food drive when food stamp benefits were at risk and stocking hygiene products in the shop after a staff member noticed some clients were having difficulty managing personal hygiene in the summer months. Her willingness to listen and respond has made “Pop Up and Take” a valued resource for all.
“Lauren supports patients across the community psychiatry programs in using the ‘Pop Up and Take’ to learn and practice numerous life skills… The skills practice, real-world applications, and self-esteem boost patients gain from their work with Lauren in this endeavor has been incredible… As a mental health therapist, I have been so amazed by the impact of Lauren’s work on patient self-esteem both from mastering skills and impactful decision-making, as well as in the community aspect of shopping together, putting together outfits, pumping each other up with compliments and allowing for self-expression through fashion… Her dedication to decreasing the stigma of ‘mental health patient’ through a universal experience has had a lovely impact on our department and improved patient care.”
Kimberly Kelly, LCPC, LCPAT
Lauren’s colleague
Leading with Compassion and Innovation
Lauren’s influence extends beyond the clients she serves each day. She has helped expand occupational therapy services into the traumatic brain injury and autism clinics at her facility, ensuring that clients with neurological and developmental conditions had access to occupation-based interventions. She has also presented nationally on her community-based practice model. By encouraging practitioners to think differently about collective occupation, she shows how occupational therapy can strengthen individuals, organizations, and communities.
Perhaps the greatest testament to Lauren’s impact comes from the families she serves. After three years of working with Lauren, a client’s parent shared:
“When you first started seeing [my child], it was not easy to get her to attend her OT appointments, but now they are the bright spot of her week. With compassion, kindness, and creativity, you have gained [my child’s] trust and allowed her to safely explore activities that both interest her and help her regulate her emotions. I am so thankful that you introduced her to the community closet/pop-up shop—it has brought her so much joy and a sense of accomplishment. She truly enjoys working alongside you in the closet and is learning how to cooperate, collaborate, and more. She is learning to communicate more effectively, better regulate her emotions, and is starting to understand what it means to give back and to help others—all because of your dedication and care.”
Parent of a client
Lauren’s work reminds us that occupational therapy is not defined by where it takes place. Whether helping one person rediscover hope or bringing a community together through collective occupation, Lauren demonstrates how occupational therapy can transform lives through participation, purpose, and connection.
