LA GRANDE — Occupational Therapist Pete Harris has recently joined the professional staff at Mountain Valley Therapy in La Grande

Born and raised in La Grande, Harris, the son of a retired dentist, Dr. Lynn Harris, and Jan Harris, graduated from La Grande High School in 2005. He attended Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, for almost a year before pausing his education to pursue volunteer occupations.

“I went to Argentina for a couple of years for a Latter-day Saints mission,” Harris said. “I studied abroad and did some volunteer work at a hospital in San Ignacio, Belize, where I helped to build a microbiology lab and performed diabetes screenings for the community.”

Following this work, he returned to BYU, where he graduated in 2012 with a double major in public health and Spanish. He then continued his education there to complete some prerequisites for graduate school and started job shadowing in Utah. With the influence of his father and physical therapist David Ebel, Harris decided to pursue a

career in occupational therapy.

“Occupational therapy strongly emphasizes fine motor skills and a lot of cognitive rehabilitation that goes along with neurological rehabilitation,” Harris said, “and for those reasons occupational therapy interested me.”

He attended Pacific University in Hillsboro, and in 2022, he earned his clinical doctorate in occupational therapy.

In his following clinical job at Cognitive FX in Provo, he worked in concussion rehab and treated more than 500 concussion patients. He learned about the use of MRI functional neurocognitive imaging to measure and analyze the differences in cognition and the brain’s blood flow distribution patterns before and after treatment.

“Then when Mountain Valley Therapy posted the occupational therapist position, I jumped at it, and I started in October,” Harris said.

He brings valuable experience to Mountain Valley Therapy in upper extremity injuries and postsurgical care, including hand therapy, visual, cognitive and functional challenges in patients with post-concussion syndrome, cerebrovascular accident and traumatic brain injury.

He performs compensatory and restorative interventions in his occupational therapy. Restorative approaches directly address functions in daily life that have been lost or diminished, and compensatory approaches are alternative methods to work with or around an impairment using adaptations. 

“This position at Mountain Valley Therapy has provided me the opportunity to utilize both skill sets alongside a team of stellar, local, healthcare professionals, including colleague Nicki Ebel and James Gorham, who has been a great boss and employer,” Harris said.

As part of his job, he attends monthly interprofessional meetings at Grande Ronde Hospital with orthopedic hand and wrist surgeon Dr. Arie Trouw and nurse practitioner Clay Hill to discuss best practices and review patient cases.

“It’s a valuable opportunity to work with some outstanding clinicians,” Harris said.

Harris and his wife, RaeAnn, said they feel they have made the best decision to relocate to La Grande and look forward to giving back to the community that encouraged him to follow this career.