Our Projects

In partnership with the Georgia Department of Public Health's Early Intervention system, Babies Can't Wait, we train providers in evidence-based practices for children birth to 3 years old. Providers receive training in Project ImPACT, a parent-coaching model that gives caregivers tools to support their child's communication development. As part of our research, we are interested in understanding how easy it is for providers to learn and use programs like Project ImPACT and how these programs can be more flexible to meet the needs of Early Intervention systems and families. We also want to know more about caregiver's perspectives while receiving Project ImPACT within Babies Can't Wait. 

Status: Ongoing

Team Members: Katherine Pickard, Nailah Islam, Karen Guerra, Nicole Hendrix, Natalie Brane, Kadie Ulven Hopkins, Liz Greenfield, Jocelyn Kuhn, Marycruz Valdiva Acosta

Autistic students are much more likely to have anxiety than non-autistic peers. Although schools are an ideal place to increase access to mental health services, we don't know which programs are most effective to support autistic students. We are currently part of a study that is comparing two school-based anxiety programs being delivered by Interdisciplinary School Providers to autistic students with anxiety ages 8-15 years. This project is being conducted in partnership with the University of Colorado School of Medicine and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. It includes two advisory boards consisting of autistic teens, caregivers, school providers, and researchers. This research project is funding by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). 

Status: Recruiting

Team Members: Katherine Pickard, Nailah Islam, Selena Valladares Ortiz, Emma Chatson 

This project began three years ago in partnership with LaAmistad, Inc., a non-profit that works to provide educational and life-enrichment services to Latino children and their families in Georgia. Our work with LaAmistad has been grounded in community-based participatory methods with an emphasis on community capacity building. Following a year-long needs assessment, we received funding from the Liz Blake Family Fund to develop and pilot a caregiver-mediated early language and literacy program designed to support Latino caregivers in learning and using strategies that promote their child’s communication skills and school readiness.  

Status: Ongoing

We recently adapted an evidence-based program to support the transition to adulthood for autistic youth and their parents, available in English and Spanish: Transitioning Together/Juntos en la Transición (TT/JET). The adaptation aimed to improve the program's feasibility, accessibility, and fit in low-resource service settings. Families who participated in our prior small pilot test of this adapted version of TT/JET reported high satisfaction with the program and strong social validity. In our current clinical trial funded by the Deborah Munroe Noonan Memorial Research Fund, we are now testing the effectiveness of this adapted version of TT/JET within Boston Medical Center (BMC), New England's largest safety net hospital system.

Team Members: Jocelyn Kuhn, Nina Menon, Rola Adebogun, Marycruz Valdiva Acosta, Alexa Laca Gonzalez

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) are an ideal setting to increase access to high-quality care for autistic toddlers given that over half of autistic children qualify for intensive ABA services prior to the age of three However, current ABA services have variable quality and have been criticized for their intensity and limitations in skill generalization. The goal of this project was to understand the difficulties incorporating high-quality naturalistic developmental behavioral intervention (NDBI) within community ABA settings. We partnered with 22 ABA frontline and supervising clinicians across several ABA organizations to learn about these challenges and are planning to use what we learned to develop strategies that make it easier for ABA providers to deliver high-quality NDBI.  

Status: Closed

Team Members: Katherine Pickard, Nailah Islam, Naomi Green, Emma Chatson, Rachel Yosick, Jocelyn Kuhn

Through this study, we aim to demonstrate the extent to which ASD evidence-based treatment effects vary by child and family participant-level variables (e.g., child's sex) and trial-level variables (e.g., treatment dosage). This study is a secondary data analysis using de-identified participant-level data from prior, published autism treatment trials. We expect to build needed knowledge to support the use of effective ASD treatments for all children.

Team Members: Jocelyn Kuhn, Cynthia Belfleur, Nina Menon

This project will build and sustain workforce capacity by training Atlanta Public Schools (APS) site leaders to coach early childhood teachers in the use of best practice engagement strategies. Based on our team’s previous work within APS and other school districts across the state of Georgia, we know that early childhood teachers often feel that they lack the skills and training to effectively support student engagement. Trainings that do occur are often discipline-or compliance-focused which--while important--can neglect to impart the critical role of self-determination and engagement. Our work will provide a sustainable training model by which early childhood teachers can be trained in engagement-building best practices in order to enhance student learning and social emotional well-being.

Team Members: Katherine Pickard, Emma Chatson, Jennifer Cardenas