Jane Bear-Lehman

Associate Professor

"I look for team members from other professional groups to help me solve the problems occupational therapists face. Steinhardt is an exciting place to meet such colleagues."

Jane Bear-Lehman is fascinated by how people use their hands, “not just for biomechanics but for expression as well.” Even thinking, she says, can be affected by the ability to use one’s hands. “If a person’s hand is hurting that means they can’t use the computer or write. A lot of people have trouble thinking clearly if they can’t organize their thoughts by taking notes.”

Bear-Lehman’s interest in the myriad ways hands help us function goes back to her earliest days as an occupational therapist. “I was working at a Chicago hospital when several patients were admitted after a subway accident. Some of them had limb injuries and I was intrigued by the therapy they needed.”

At about the same time she attended a conference where hand surgeons and hand therapists spoke about all aspects of hand care. She became even more intrigued, and realized she wanted to devote herself to helping individuals with upper limb and hand injures so that they could reenter the workplace. She also wanted to create and encourage work safety strategies that would prevent injuries.

Today Bear-Lehman is applying her formidable knowledge about hands to a study funded by the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Health. She’s part of a team of researchers who are looking at healthy seniors over the age of seventy who live in upper Manhattan. The team oversees a physician and an occupational therapist who test the seniors with everyday activities - sweeping a floor, shining their shoes – to get a sense of their strength and sensation in their hands.

Bear-Lehman and her colleagues hope the results of these and other tests will help them better understand the strength and adaptability of urban elders, about which not much is known. How, for instance, are so many seniors able to live alone? How do many of them survive in an urban environment without extensive support systems? "The research that does exist on elderly people," Bear-Lehman says "doesn't make distinctions between seventy, eighty and ninety year olds. My colleagues and I are trying to accurately chart all of the physical changes in people over seventy as they progress toward the age of one hundred."

Bear-Lehman’s research is a point of discussion for her students in class, and she involves them in her research as data collectors or to help with data analysis. “I find the students enjoyable and eager to learn,” she says. She is especially gratified by her doctoral students who knew of her research in advance of her joining the department. Her reputation as a distinguished faculty member at Columbia University preceded her, as did her ties to the Occupational Therapy department where she received her PhD. “The doctoral students seemed to be very excited when I began teaching because they knew about my work and wanted to explore it further with me.”

As for the department itself, Bear-Lehman is encouraged to see it “move and grow towards a research agenda. I really want to be part of that.”

She also sees the department becoming more integrated in The Steinhardt School. “To be able to work not only with occupational therapists and people who want to become occupational therapists, but also with people from other professions is crucial to my work.” For instance, she hopes to resume research on computer use and hand trauma. “At Steinhardt there are people who work in elementary education where computers are taught. I have a lot of questions I think they could answer. I always look for team members from other professional groups to help me solve the problems that occupational therapists face. I think The Steinhardt School is an exciting place to meet such colleagues.”

Jane Bear-Lehman's complete faculty bio.