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What’s Quality of Life Got To Do With it?

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This week’s #ASFpodcast highlights a new study from Dr. Elizabeth Kaplan-Kahn, who is improving a measure of Quality of Life for autistic individuals who are minimally verbal or have cognitive disabilities. These individuals may have different outcomes as other autistics, but their responses are just as important. Dr. Kaplan-Kahn talks about what it means, how it is related to other outcomes collected, and what’s she’s doing to improve Quality of Life measures.

She working to do this through scientific study! If you or a family member is non-speaking or cognitively disabled, and want to help with improving measures of Quality of Life, click here: https://redcap.link/pablid

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Tooth brushing: It’s not for sissies

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Parents or caregivers of children with ASD sometimes have a lot of difficulty helping their child brush their teeth. Parents and caregivers of children not on the spectrum have difficulty helping their child brush their teeth. By working with families on an individual level, coaching, encouraging and breaking down each of the steps of tooth brushing into something manageable, a group of Medicaid-eligible parents helped their children learn these skills on some level by the end of the study. Incredibly, 93% of parents who are trying to do it all with less, stayed in the program and felt more confident about their abilities. This study also used a randomized clinical trial design which compared the training and coaching with just those who got some toothbrushes and toothpastes in the mail. In this week’s #ASFpodcast, you get to hear from the leaders and the therapists who helped these families, what they did, and what worked. Join me with Dr. Eric Butter, Kelly Birmingham and Dr. Rachel Fenning to hear more about this study.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35211746/