Association for Behavior Analysis International

The Neurobehavioral Programs at Kennedy Krieger Institute provide assessment and treatment of severe problem behavior displayed by individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The program has been in existence for over 30 years, and has served individuals from throughout the US and internationally. These presentations will describe the Neurobehavioral Program’s continuum of care, and how clinical services, research, and training are fully integrated and inform one another. In the first presentation, the continuum of services and neurobehavioral model of interdisciplinary assessment and treatment will be reviewed, highlighting behavioral and psychiatric approaches. Our outcome data indicate that 88% of patients achieved at least an 80% reduction in aggression, self-injury, property destruction, or other targeted behaviors; also, 86% of patients maintained behavior reductions at 3- and 6-month follow-up observations. The second presentation will describe the systematic process of integration of clinical care and research used in the Neurobehavioral Programs. Examples of this data-based approach will illustrate how this process can improve clinical outcomes and generate research that contributes to scientific knowledge.

The integration of clinical practice and research was foundational to the establishment of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Kennedy Krieger Institute - parent institutions of the Neurobehavioral Programs. These programs provide a continuum of care serving individuals with developmental disabilities who present with severe behavioral dysfunction. Over the past three decades, faculty and staff have published over 300 articles in peer reviewed journals, and received research funding in excess of $11M. This has been achieved in part through systematic data collection, data curation, and ongoing analysis of clinical outcomes. Datasets are accumulated and findings analyzed to evaluate clinical procedures, and inform changes to improve clinical care and guide research. Examples will be provided to illustrate how this approach has led to the development and refinement of clinical procedures, permitted larger scale evaluations of clinical procedures to examine their effectiveness and their limitations, and has resulted in new knowledge about problem behavior. Integration of clinical and research activities within a clinical program is critical to ensuring excellence in care, and can inspire clinically relevant research that contributes to knowledge and practice.