News
7/9/2018
AUCD Strongly Opposes Decision to Let Electric Shock Treatments Continue
The Association of University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD) stands with many other national disability organizations in strongly opposing the recent decision by a Probate and Family Court judge to allow a school in Canton, Massachusetts, to continue administering electric shocks to students with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
7/2/2018
Boston LEND Graduation
May marked the end of another successful LEND Boston program with the graduation of 21 Leadership Fellows from our LEND program. David Helm, LEND Director, reviewed the events of the year and LEND faculty mentors handed out the LEND certificates. The LEND fellows talked about five areas of the program and the lessons they learned over the course of the year.
7/2/2018
Voting
Voting is one of the most important rights of a US citizen. It allows people to choose leaders they feel will best represent their needs on the local, state, and federal levels. You can make real change by being an educated voter in your community.
6/25/2018
The Boggs Center (NJ UCEDD/LEND) Celebrates the Graduation of the 2017-2018 NJLEND Fellows and Trainees at the 2nd Annual Maternal and Child Health Leadership Symposium
The 2017-2018 NJLEND Fellows and Boggs Center Interdisciplinary Trainees graduated from The Boggs Center's New Jersey Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (NJLEND) program and The Boggs Center Interdisciplinary Traineeship program.
6/20/2018
AUCD Strongly Opposes Family Separation at Borders, Calls on Lawmakers and the Administration to Take Action
The Association of University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD) is a diverse, interdisciplinary leadership, research, training, and service network which includes the nation's leading experts on child development, family-centered care, and trauma. Those perspectives and our shared humanity provide the foundation to unequivocally oppose the separation of families as they enter America.
6/18/2018
TIPS 4 Kids (Missouri LEND) Hosts Successful Leadership Project Poster Session
TIPS 4 Kids, Missouri's LEND, hosted a poster session of trainee's yearlong leadership projects. Approximately 100 students, faculty, community stakeholders, and practitioners attended. Rep. Sara Walsh, of the Missouri House of Representatives, was also in attendance, and we look forward to future collaboration with her and other members of the Missouri House of Representatives.
6/11/2018
Institute for Disability Studies Assisting Young Adults with Job Training, Internships (MS UCEDD)
The transition from youth to adulthood following the completion of high school can be challenging and confusing for any young adult. Further, this transition may be particularly challenging for young adults with disabilities, particularly those with intellectual or developmental disabilities whose life plans are still unclear.
6/8/2018
MCDD Public Health Trainee Receives a Distinguished Essay Award (MD UCEDD)
Meredith Nicholson, a trainee at the Maryland Center for Developmental Disabilities (MCDD) at Kennedy Krieger Institute, is the 2018 recipient of the MSPH Distinguished Essay Award through The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Population, Family & Reproductive Health. Her essay is titled "Mental Health Disparities of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, and Asexual (LGBTQA) Autistic Adults Compared to Heterosexual & Cisgender Autistic Adults" and was selected for the award out of all submitted master's essays in the department.
5/15/2018
MNLEND Fellow Leads Creation of Sensory Tents in the Minneapolis Parks
Summer is coming and city parks will soon be filled with crowds, noisy events, excited children, food, and family pets. For most people, this is a celebration of warm weather and a chance to reconnect with family and friends in the great outdoors. But Elise Niedermeier (far right in photograph), a Fellow in ICI's Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (MNLEND) program, and the ADA Coordinator for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB), knows that for some people -- such as children with autism -- all this stimulation can become sensory overload.
5/10/2018
AUCD Seeks Two Emerging Leaders Interns
Applications Due June 22, 2018
AUCD is seeking two current trainees to work as AUCD Emerging Leaders Interns (formerly Virtual Trainees) to work together to passionately represent the trainee network. Ideal candidates will be big-picture thinkers who value building and enhancing a community among trainees and emerging leaders (e.g. early career professionals and trainee alumni) in meaningful and sustainable ways across all AUCD member sites (i.e., LENDs, UCEDDs, and IDDRCs). The AUCD Emerging Leaders Interns will act as connection points between the national network and each Program/Center by ensuring trainees receive relevant information and opportunities related to leadership, research, grants fellowships, emerging issues, and more.
5/4/2018
A Founding Member of the AUCD Family Discipline Network Leaving Va-LEND
Just as a bridge in music links two sections of a composition, so it is with Elaine Ogburn, who has been the bridge connecting Va-LEND trainees with mentoring families for 19 years. This type of synergy is worth noting and will not be easy to duplicate when she leaves Va-LEND on June 30th. Elaine is the Family Mentorship Experience (FME) Coordinator and a Family Discipline faculty member of Va-LEND, part of the Partnership for People with Disabilities at Virginia Commonwealth University.
5/3/2018
Bitter for Better: former UCCEDD LEND trainee running for State Senate in Ohio
Sara Bitter is a mother, lawyer and leader in advocacy. She and her husband, Kai, are the parents of two children living with a developmental disability. Sara has devoted her entire career to helping improve the lives of people living with disabilities and their families, including her current role as the UCCEDD. She knows that parents of children with special healthcare needs, families who have loved ones living with mental health conditions and communities torn apart by the opioid crisis, do not have lobbyists. Sara would like to bring these voices to the Ohio legislature by creating a Disability, Mental Health and Addiction Caucus.
5/2/2018
Iowa LEND Educates Legislators on the Hill
The Iowa Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND) trainees traveled from Iowa City, Iowa to attended the 2018 Disability Policy Seminar (DPS) in Washington, D.C from April 23rd-25th, 2018. Earlier in the year, the trainees spoke with Iowa's State legislators (Representative Ashley Hinson, Representative Bobby Kaufmann, Senator Liz Mathis, and Senator Joe Bolkcom) in Des Moines, Iowa to discuss the importance of LEND and state-level disability issues. The trip to the U.S. Capitol served as the culmination of the Iowa LEND experience, allowing trainees to use the tools they had learned in the past year to advocate and educate on disability rights at the federal level.
5/2/2018
LEND Audiology Trainees at EHDI 2018
The 17th annual Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) Meeting took place in Denver, CO. The Meeting welcomed around 1,000 diverse stakeholders nationwide to enhance the implementation of comprehensive state-based EHDI programs and expand opportunities for young children who are deaf and hard of hearing. The EHDI Meeting was organized by American Academy of Pediatrics, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: HRSA, Hands and Voices, and National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management at Utah State University.
4/26/2018
CDC Releases New Key Findings on Autism Spectrum Disorder
For more than two decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been tracking the prevalence and characteristics of children with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, through a multi-state tracking system focused on school-aged children. Data from the CDC's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM)* Network help us understand more about the number of children with ASD, the characteristics of those children, and the age at which they are first evaluated and diagnosed.
4/23/2018
Training parents of youth with autism spectrum disorders to advocate for adult disability services: Results from a pilot randomized controlled trial
Training parents of youth with autism spectrum disorders to advocate for adult disability services: Results from a pilot randomized controlled trial. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
