Participatory Research With Autistic Adults

This webinar launched this year’s series on using participatory research approaches with autistic adults. Dr. Nicolaidis started with an overview of different types of participatory models, and how they may be applied to conduct research in partnership with autistic adults and other stakeholders. She then offered practical examples, lessons learned, and recommendations from her work with the Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE; www.aaspire.org) and other participatory research projects over the past two decades.

Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH is Professor in the School of Social Work at Portland State University (PSU), with a secondary appointment in the School of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). She is the co-founder and co-director of the Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE), a long-standing academic-community partnership that uses community-based participatory research (CBPR) to address the priorities of autistic adults. Dr. Nicolaidis has led multiple NIH-funded CBPR projects, including a series of studies on healthcare for autistic adults and large project to develop and test accessible outcome measures to evaluate services for autistic adults. She also is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal, Autism in Adulthood. More broadly, Dr. Nicolaidis works to improve health equity and address social determinants of health. She directs the Social Determinants of Health Initiative and teaches research methods at PSU, teaches and practices hospital-based internal medicine at OHSU, and mentors dozens of junior faculty members and trainees across the world.