2 - (SYM 137) Implementation Adaptations of a Parenting Intervention for Autistic Youth with Challenging Behaviors for Behavioral Health Providers in Primary Care Settings

Serving the growing number of youth diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a rising challenge for community-based behavioral health providers. One scalable approach to addressing this need is through community implementation of parent training programs, which are empirically supported, time-limited, and cost-effective. Manualized interventions have the benefit of providing a structured implementation approach for community clinicians who have less training in treating autistic youth. The RUBI program is a manualized parent training intervention for autistic youth with challenging behavior that can increase access to care through community implementation. As RUBI addresses salient challenging behaviors but has lower resource demands for implementation, this new line of intervention dissemination could be responsive to challenges with current models of care (Applied Behavior Analysis), which generally have significant issues with accessibility given ABA’s complex, resource-intense nature.   One specific expansion of community implementation of RUBI is delivery by behavioral health providers located in primary care settings.

The presentation describes a novel effort to train behavioral health providers located in primary care settings in the implementation of the RUBI parent training program. To date, 61 behavioral health providers located at 8 unique sites have participated in training in RUBI. Outcomes of interest include therapist engagement in and satisfaction with the RUBI training as well as provider use of RUBI strategies with families post training. Discussion will include modifications to standard RUBI training protocols and implementation approaches as a means to facilitate training of interdisciplinary behavioral health providers in order to improve clinicians’ comfort and knowledge related to the implementation of RUBI. Through this presentation, we hope to highlight how parent training can address the unmet needs in the community and advance dissemination in order to increase access to care for autistic individuals and their families.