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Susan Cox Johnson
Susan Cox Johnson (1876 - 1932) was best known as one of the founders of National Society for the Promotion of Occupational Therapy (NSPOT) and referred to today as (AOTA). She based her life work to better understand and educate others on Occupational Therapy with her research and understanding of the field of study. Occupational therapy is the process of a therapist with specialization in the field helping to determine goals of a patient and helping achieve goals and activities through repetition of activities. Johnson taught arts and crafts at both Berkley and in the Philippines researching and understanding what the effects of stimulating the brain with activities such as arts and crafts could do for a patient needing support.

Early Life
Susan Cox Johnson was born in 1876. In early Life she attended University of California, Berkeley and taught arts and crafts and textile design to high school children in the area. She went on to work in the Filipino Islands in 1912 where she was studying her ideas of stimulating brain function in patients with mental or physical disorders. This teaching opportunity was an educational experiment to prove mental and physical conditions could be improved through activities that stimulated these parts of the body. Johnson had proved through her work and teaching that the students self sufficiency had increased with exercising the body and mind with activities such as arts and crafts.

Career
Johnson was invited by George Barton (AOTA's first president) and William Rush Dunton to attend the first meeting of NSPOT which would become AOTA. In 1916, Johnson worked as a teacher for the University of Columbia in New York for Occupational Therapy. After continuing her career, in 1921 she gained the title of Chair of Admissions and Positions of the American Occupational Therapy Association. She spread the message that OT's should be differentiated from nurses since they both have different responsibilities as well as similar responsibilities for the care of patients. Johnson held a standard that all OT's should be able to teach arts and crafts as well as stimulating activities to help therapudically the mental and physical disabilities of patients. Johnsons pioneering of OT's created questions and answers to what should be learned and taught in the future. While Johnson was forming her opinions and research on OT, World War 1 was taking place. Johnson emphasized on differentiating between civilian and military hospital education regiments as pressing at the time. Johnson stated that the core principal of therapeutics was to never change but, how the treatment was done could. The work of Susan Johnson and the other members of AOTA was the first of its kind in both collaboration and research to create the distinct position of OT's separating their field of study with general nurses.