COUNCIL ON RESEARCH AND EVALUATION (CORE)
9/15/2022
The 2022 Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Award Staff Winner
Ashley Salmon, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Research Associate at the Center for Leadership in Disability at the School of Public Health has been awarded the 2022 Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Award.
9/14/2022
Joan Beasley, PhD, Promoted to Research Professor
Institute on Disability (IOD) is proud to announce the promotion of Joan B. Beasley, PhD, to Research Professor at the University of New Hampshire. The promotion is granted to faculty who have a background in successful research, marked by maturity and experience that have earned them a national or international reputation in their field. UNH research faculty bring a substantial proportion of the university's external funding, mentor graduate students, and deepen scholarly life across campus.
9/6/2022
Building Community Capacity for Accessible Vaccine Events
The UCEDD in the Institute on Development and Disability at OHSU worked with the Oregon Health Authority to create resources for vaccine events to be more inclusive. They made videos, guides, and checklists to go with a boxed kit of accessibility tools. This will help people with disabilities and people who speak languages other than English get vaccines in their communities. There are more videos and resources coming soon.
8/29/2022
Children with autism report greater gender diversity: study
Emily Stembridge
Children with autism report higher rates of gender diversity - the way an individual experiences gender, which may be different from the gender they were assigned at birth - than their typically developing peers, Vanderbilt Kennedy Center (TN IDDRC, UCEDD, LEND) researchers have found.
8/12/2022
Inclusive, Accessible Health Care the Focus of Free Continuing Medical Education Course
Primary care providers can receive three CME credit hours while learning how to provide better care to their patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
A new Continuing Medical Education (CME) course aimed at facilitating more equitable and accessible health care for patients with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (I/DD) is available through the University of Arizona Sonoran Center for Excellence in Disabilities. The CME is a free and self-directed online course for physicians, nurse practitioners, and other licensed health care providers who require continuing education. Course completion grants three CME credit hours toward license renewal.
8/9/2022
ANCOR's COVID-19 Vaccine Toolkit
As a DSP, It's Up to Me! Protect yourself and the people you support
Developed by ANCOR with funding from the Association of University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD), "As a DSP It's Up to Me" recognizes that people with I/DD should be able to live and thrive in their communities. We want them to live where they want to live, with whom they want to live. We want them to have jobs that are fulfilling to them. And we recognize achieving these goals requires isolating people with I/DD from the dangers of COVID-19. With a goal of keeping people with I/DD and the people around them safe and healthy, The COVID-19 Vaccine Toolkit was designed with ANCOR members and other community providers in mind. You are an essential partner for this initiative, and these tools were designed for you-to make it as easy as possible for you to engage with your colleagues on the frontlines to get vaccinated.
8/1/2022
Engineering non-hallucinogenic versions of psychedelics to treat psychiatric conditions
By David E. Olson, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry and Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Medicine
Psychedlic drugs like MDMA and LSD can promote neuroplasticity and help treat some mental illnesses in autistic adults. To lessen the risk of dangerous side effects, the Olson Lab created safer, non-hallucinogenic psychedelics that show promise in models.
7/27/2022
Autism characteristics in individuals with Down syndrome
Amanda Dimachkie Nunnally, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, UC Davis Mind Institute
There is still much to be understood about the presentation of autism symptoms in individuals with Down syndrome, as some of the core characteristics of autism may overlap with intellectual disability. Individuals with Down syndrome and co-occurring autism tend to have more severe rigid and repetitive behaviors and greater challenges with social communication than do individuals with Down syndrome alone. However, the degree to which symptoms can be attributed to each condition remains understudied.
7/27/2022
Decline in looking at faces may signal onset of autism in infants
By Devon Gangi, Assistant Project Scientist, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
A new study from UC Davis Mind Institute supports earlier findings that children who were diagnosed with autism at age 3 had a decreased level of eye gaze as infants compared to children without autism. This gives new insights into development trajectories and may help children get identified earlier.
7/27/2022
Developing innovative methods to study the human genome
Medium or large changes to the genome are called structural variations (SVs). SVs are tied to many different diseases and conditions. Researchers at UC Davis Mind Institute are developing new models to understand and study SVs.
7/27/2022
The role of maternal autoantibody exposure in brain development and behavior in autism
By Matthew Bruce
A recent collaborative effort by MIND Institute Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC) investigators Judy Van de Water, Jill Silverman, and Jacqueline Crawley, as well as researchers from Canada and the United Kingdom, used an animal model to evaluate the effects maternal autoantibodies on offspring brain development.
7/25/2022
Community Supports in Crisis: No Staff, No Services
All the progress toward community living that has been made in services for people with IDD over decades is now in jeopardy because of catastrophic labor shortages and pervasive high turnover rates in the direct support workforce. This white paper from ICI and its partners at HSRI and NASDDDS explores the depth of the crisis in the workforce and the impact on people with IDD and sounds the alarm about the nature and scope of the workforce crisis in the IDD service system.
7/20/2022
KU Multidisciplinary Team Awarded Research Rising Grant
The University of Kansas (KU) has selected a proposal submitted by the KU Life Span Institute for funding under the Research Rising initiative. The goal of the project, Advancing Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research at KU, is to transform understanding of and support for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
7/20/2022
RTC:Rural - Participatory Curriculum Development for Health and Independent Living for Disabled People: A Qualitative Study of Participant Experiences
A host of RTC:Rural researchers worked with Center for Independent Living staff members through participatory curriculum development to create and update curriculum for in-person, web-based delivery. Engaging members of the intended audiences in the curriculum development process in this way is a relatively new approach to health promotion. Developing curriculum for and with disabled people had not previously been done, and is shown to be a valuable, worthwhile approach.
7/14/2022
The Story Behind Maternal Autoantibody Related Autism (MARA)
Judy Van de Water
During pregnancy, twenty-three percent of mothers of children diagnosed with autism had the presence of "autoantibodies" that can attach to proteins in a developing fetus's brain, compared to less than one percent of mothers whose children do not have autism. The UC Davis MIND Institute Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC) used a new technology to examine specific patterns of these autoantibodies and their effects and found that all eight antibody patterns were associated with an outcome of autism in a child. The hope is that testing for Maternal Autoantibody Related Austim (MARA) autoantibody patterns can be used to assess the likelihood of a child having autism, in order to help families to prepare for supports and services their child may need.