The AASPIRE Healthcare Toolkit: Improving Healthcare for Autistic Adults

AN INTRODUCTION TO ONLINE TOOLS TO IMPROVE HEALTHCARE FOR AUTISTIC ADULTS

The Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE) used a community-based participatory research approach to develop a set of online tools meant to improve primary healthcare for adults on the autism spectrum. Dr. Nicolaidis will review the research used to create and evaluate the toolkit and will demonstrate how adult patients, their supporters, and their providers can use the tools to facilitate high quality healthcare.

Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH, is a Professor at the School of Social Work at Portland State University and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. As a general internist and health services researcher, Dr. Nicolaidis uses participatory research to improve the health and healthcare of marginalized populations. The majority of her current projects focus on autism in adulthood. She is the co-founder and co-director of the Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE), an international academic-community partnership that uses community-based participatory research to address the priorities of autistic adults. AASPIRE has conducted a series of National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-funded studies on health care and employment for autistic adults and has created the AASPIRE Healthcare Toolkit for use in primary care settings. She is currently leading a large NIMH-funded R01 project to develop and test a set of accessible, patient-reported outcome measures 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 has led or collaborated on multiple externally-funded projects on intimate partner violence, racial health equity, chronic pain, substance use disorders, and health system transformation. She directs the Social Determinants of Health Initiative, which brings together individuals from Portland State University, Oregon Health & Science University, community organizations, governmental agencies, and local health systems to improve health equity. Dr. Nicolaidis teaches in the School of Social Work at Portland State University (PSU) and teaches and practices internal medicine at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU).