Mobility Match
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MOBILITY MATCH
Guiding Principle
Every individual deserves the opportunity to access their community in a way that is safe, meaningful, and aligned with their abilities, goals, and preferences. Mobility Match helps turn that opportunity into a pathway toward greater independence, participation, and quality of life.
About the Mobility Match Tools
Grounded in a powerful belief that community mobility is essential to health, participation, independence, and quality of life, Mobility Match is an innovative occupational therapy tool designed to help individuals identify the safest, most appropriate, and least restrictive transportation options available within their communities.
Using a collaborative approach with an occupational therapist, the three checklists engage individuals, caregivers, healthcare providers, educators, and social service professionals in evaluating functional abilities, support needs, and available community resources.
The resulting Mobility Match Report identifies transportation options that align with the individual’s strengths and challenges while providing guidance for targeted intervention, goal development, and skill-building to enhance community mobility.
The Three Mobility Match Checklists
Checklist for Individuals with Primarily Intellectual Disabilities
This checklist focuses on functional skills and abilities related to cognition, communication, and behavior that influence an individual’s ability to use community transportation and alternative transportation options.
Checklist for Individuals with Primarily Physical Disabilities
This checklist focuses on functional skills and abilities related to physical functioning, cognition, communication, and self-monitoring that affect participation in community transportation.
Checklist for Individuals with Primarily Autism
This checklist focuses on functional skills and abilities related to sensory processing, physical functioning, cognition, communication, and behavior that influence successful use of community transportation options.
Selecting the Appropriate Checklist
Many individuals have complex needs that extend beyond a single diagnostic category. Developmental disabilities often involve challenges and strengths that span multiple functional areas. For this reason, more than one checklist may be appropriate to ensure a comprehensive assessment of an individual’s mobility-related abilities and support needs.
Rather than relying solely on diagnosis, Mobility Match emphasizes functional performance and real-world participation. Using multiple checklists, when appropriate, can provide a more complete understanding of the individual’s abilities, challenges, and transportation needs, leading to more accurate recommendations and more effective intervention planning.
The Mobility Match Team
Anne Dickerson, PhD, OTR/L, SCDCM, FAOTA, FGSA is a professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy, East Carolina University. She is Director of the Research for the Older Adult Driver Initiative (ROADI) and current editor of Occupational Therapy in Health Care. Dr. Dickerson is an international leader in occupational therapy research in areas of older adults, driver simulation, and drivers with autism spectrum disorder, and driver rehabilitation.
Heather Panczykowski
, DHSc, OTR/L, FAOTA is an associate professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy at East Carolina University. She has extensive experience working with children and youth and continues to address their needs using complementary approaches in her research. Dr. Panczykowski holds multiple certifications that enhance her ability to create impactful programs tailored to the needs of children and young adults with special needs.
Ellee Hopkins is an occupational therapy therapist who completed her entrt-level doctoral degree (OTD) at East Carolina University. Her capstone project enhanced the community mobility checklists through multi-media education. Her dedication to individuals with disabilities was evident as she worked with Dr. Dickerson on these checklists as a graduate assistant.
Our Vision
Community mobility is accessible to everyone, enabling individuals to reach the places they need and want to go in order to support their health, engage in their communities, and enhance their quality of life.
Our Mission
Mobility Match is dedicated to the ongoing development and advancement of occupational therapy tools that connect an individual’s unique strengths, abilities, and support needs with the most appropriate community mobility options using informed decision-making, to promote independence, participation, and inclusion.
Background of Mobility Match
The initial concept of the three Mobility Match Checklists was identified in a response to a request for applications from the North Carolina on Developmental Disabilities (NCCDD). The call for the Community Living Mini Grants, September 2023, was to address NCCDD’s Goal 2 in its Five-Year State Plan:
By 2026, increase community living for individuals with intellectual and other developmental disabilities.
Objective B, under Goal 2, specifically addressed transportation with a measurement of more individuals with I/DD will have transportation options to support community living and employment. Dr. Anne Dickerson submitted for one of the mini grants and was awarded the contract in December 2023.
In a previous project for the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), Anne Dickerson and Elin Schold Davis created an Occupational Therapy Checklist for Community Mobility (OTCCM) specifically for older adults who were no longer able to drive. Using this paper model, Dr. Dickerson proposed creating three checklists for three general categories of individuals: Individuals with primarily intellectual disabilities, individuals with primarily physical disabilities, and autistic individuals. Incorporating technology, she and her team designed each Checklists to “match” the various types of community mobility (other than driving) to the unique strengths and challenges of individuals with disabilities.
Ultimately, the Checklists were designed by Dr. Dickerson and her doctoral student, Ellee Hopkins, with expert feedback from Dr. Miriam Monahan. The Checklists were drafted and revised based on expert review by a group of occupational therapists who work directly with one or more the three populations.
Dr. Heather Panczykowski joined the team when Dr. Dickerson and Elle Hopkins applied to submit the Mobility Match for an I-Corps@ECU project to further its potential use in the marketplace. With funds awarded from I-Corps@ECU, the Mobility Match website was created and enhanced with additional monetary support from ECU’s College of Allied Health Sciences’ Office of Research.