Keep up-to-date with our latest news and happenings.
Congratulations to the Shriver Center’s own Amy Weinstock and her amazing dedicated team at the Autism Insurance Resource Center on the success of their annual “Insurance Update and Celebration of Champions.”
The Shriver Center’s Emily Rubin recently took to the airwaves promote her longstanding professional interest in providing support to siblings of individuals diagnosed with physical, intellectual, psychiatric, and/or developmental disabilities.
Rubin appeared as a guest on the Shrewsbury Media Connection program and discussed two separate, individual chapters of her sibling work.
Congratulations to the Shriver Center’s own Sohye Kim, PhD on her recent KL2 grant award from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), a division of the National Institute of Health (NIH).
The multi-year award focuses on developing innovative neuroimaging techniques to study the infant’s developing social brain, a research area of interest to Dr. Kim throughout her professional career.
Continued access to mental health services and supports remains a vital care component for people throughout Massachusetts, both during this COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Accessing those services and supports is particularly important for youth and young adults with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or intellectual disabilities (ID), and those who care about them.
To that end, Shriver Center Executive Director, Jean Frazier MD, has been named Co-Director of a program funded by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services to increase the knowledge and capacity of mobile crisis intervention (MCI) teams in working with youth and young adults with ASD/ID who are having a behavioral health crisis.
Since the emergence of COVID-19 early in 2020, many fundraising efforts have gone entirely virtual, due to the necessity of mask-wearing and implementation of strict social distancing guidelines.
One such event took place back in September, as the Doug Flutie Jr Foundation For Autism held a virtual 5K, committing that all funds raised by partner organizations would be contributed back to them.
The Autism Insurance Resource Center’s team of 16 members (ranging from 3 years old to Senior Citizens), enthusiastically walked and ran, and most importantly, raised cover $10,000 in contributions to support their important work, achieving the 3rd highest team total!
Congratulations to “Team AIRC” and its dedicated group of supporters!
On August 12, 2020, a virtual celebration was held marking 10 years since the Massachusetts passage of An Act Relative to Insurance Coverage For Autism (ARICA). ARICA mandates that all insurance carriers in the state provide patient coverage for therapies and ABA services of anyone diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
The virtual celebration occurred on the Facebook Live page of the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism. This foundation is both an inaugural and consistent funder of the AIRC. According to the Foundation’s social media sites, guests at the event included former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, former State Senator Barbara L’Italien, Red Sox Executive Larry Cancro, Advocates Judith Ursitti of Autism Speaks and Michael Borr of Advocates for Autism of Massachusetts (AFAM), among others.
ARICA was the brainchild of the Shriver Center’s own Amy Weinstock who was a LEND Fellow when she initially conceived of the project in 2005. Amy returned to the Shriver Center in 2011 to establish the Autism Insurance Resource Center (AIRC), which she continues to direct. Housed within the Shriver Center, the AIRC staff provides outreach, technical assistance and training for the autism community on issues related to insurance, serving thousands of individuals each year. AIRC staff also make presentations about insurance and related issues to school systems, community organizations, and other entities throughout Massachusetts.
Congratulations to ARICA supporters throughout Massachusetts and everyone at the AIRC for this tremendous achievement!
Congratulations to Shriver’s own David N. Kennedy, PhD on his recent grant award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The grant is designed to develop an “ABCD-ReproNim Course” that provides training for reproducible analyses of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study® data. Reproducible data analysis, as applied to neuroimaging, has been a longtime professional research interest of Dr. Kennedy. Dr. Kennedy leads ReproNim: A Center for Reproducible Neuroimaging Computation, a National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) funded biomedical technology research center. The Center’s mission is to improve the reproducibility of neuroimaging science and extend the value of our national investment in neuroimaging research, while making the process easier and more efficient for investigators.
The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study® is the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States, and, is following 10,000 ten year olds for the next 10 years. The ABCD study looks at the development of physical, cognitive, social, emotional, environmental, behavioral, and academic assessments, as well as multimodal neuroimaging and biospecimen collection for hormonal, genetic, epigenetic, environmental exposure, and substance use analysis. Along with Dr. Kennedy’s Co-PI Angela Laird, PhD from Florida International University, the project also brings together research leaders from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Canada’s McGill University and 18 instructors from institutions worldwide. For more information on Dr. Kennedy’s ABCD study, visit: https://www.abcd-repronim.org/
The Shriver Center’s Associate Director Carol Curtin, PhD, LICSW, recently appeared on the noted Youtube channel “Tuesdays with Liz” to discuss the work of the Healthy Weight Research Network (HWRN), which is housed at the Shriver Center and funded by the Maternal Child Health Bureau. The HWRN is a collective of researchers around the country who are engaged in research to promote healthy weight among children with autism and other intellectual/developmental disabilities.
The Shriver Center’s own Emily Rubin took to the airwaves on Sept 28, 2019 as a guest on the “Fundacion Cambiando el Mundo de personas con Discapacidad” radio show (CEMDPCD Foundation).
Translated from Spanish as “Changing the World of People with Disabilities”, Rubin’s appearance on the CEMDPCD radio program occurred in her capacity as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Sibling Support Network (MSSN). The MSSN is not directly affiliated with the Shriver Center.
The 2nd HWRN symposium will provide a forum for researchers, practitioners, policymakers, people with disabilities, family members, and other interested individuals to learn about current research in the field related to promoting healthy weight for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Through knowledge translation and dissemination this interdisciplinary symposium provides an opportunity to shine a light on the need for evidence-based health promotion programs, practices, and policies on behalf of this population.
The Symposium will also include a poster session to highlight innovative research activities that align with the HWRN’s research agenda and a networking reception to enable conference participants to meet and learn from one another.