The Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center at UMass Chan Medical School is extremely pleased to announce the renewal of its five-year University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD) grant.  Providing $3M over the next 5 years, this award continues a decades-long funding source of support to further the Shriver Center’s mission to conduct education, research, and services to improve the lives of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) and their families and caregivers.

“The Shriver Center is among the oldest UCEDDs in the country. This core funding enables Shriver Center faculty and staff to conduct their work, leverage external funding to support their projects and programs, and develop new initiatives, all to benefit individuals with I/DD and their families,” said Carol Curtin, PHD, UCEDD Principal Investigator and Director, Professor of Family Medicine and Psychiatry at UMass Chan Medical School.

“In past years, UCEDD funding has been used to launch new programs such as the Insurance Resource Center for Autism and Behavioral Health, our Healthy People/Healthy Communities health promotion research program, and the Pathways to Inclusive Health Care (PIHC), training program, to name a few.  The funding also continues to provide partial support for many other programs and initiatives at the Shriver Center,” Dr. Curtin continued.

The Shriver Center UCEDD is part of a nationwide network comprising 67 UCEDDs across the country. This network is authorized under Public Law 106-402, the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act of 2000, and is funded by the Office of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (OIDD) within the Administration on Community Living (ACL).