Historia/History

In 1991 at the AOTA Annual Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio the Hispanic Occupational Therapists of Illinois (HOTI) organized the first National Meeting of Hispanic Practicioners. Five people attended, Jaime Phillip Muñoz, Lesbia Acevedo-Navarro, Brian Gibbs, Jim Hinojosa and Beatriz Abreu. It was a humble beginning.

Muñoz and Acevedo-Navarro continued to push for the development of a national networking group of Hispanic/Latino practitioners and students. In 1992, at the AOTA Conference in Houston, Texas more than 50 practitioners and students responded to a call to meet and network. Members of HOTI and the Puerto Rico Occupational Therapy Association (PROTA) were instrumental in the success of this second meeting. A primary focus of the Houston meeting was encouraging the development of additional state organizations in different parts of the country. Shortly after, under the leadership of Anabel Rivera de Colón, the Southeastern Hispanic Occupational Therapy (SEHOT) network was formed in Florida. During the 1993 AOTA Conference in Seattle, the goal of the TODOS network was to find ways to strenghten our network and draft a mission statement. One method was to generate a TODOS Newsletter we called Adelante.

In 1994, at the Boston conference, we adopted the name TODOS, agreed on a mission statement, and outlined objectives for our network. TODOS continued to met each year at AOTA Conference. Additional issues of a newsletter, Adelante, were compiled and distributed under the guidance of Edna Mauras-Neslen. In 1997, under the leadership of Guillermo R. Cruz, Jr., a third state network, the Hispanic Occupational Therapists of New York (HOT-NY) was established. TODOS members continue to meet each year at AOTA conference. If you make it to the next conference ... join us!  If you cn't make it to a conference, join us on-line here or on FaceBook http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=185264160567&ref=search&sid=100000324004896.3447874133..1