In this talk, Professor Sandy Magaña, PhD, MSW, will discuss the need for culturally tailored parent mediated interventions for parents of children with ASD and the process of cultural adaptation. She will use examples from her own research in which a parent educational intervention was developed for Latino families of children with ASD and later adapted for African American, Chinese American, and low-resource communities.

Learning Objectives

• Attendees will be able to explain the importance of cultural adaptation.
• Attendees will be able to identify at least 3 key components important for cultural adaptation.
• Attendees will be able to apply at least one strategy for working with diverse populations in their own practice.

Professor Magaña, who holds the Professorship in Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disabilities in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work, received a Master of Social Work from California State University, San Bernardino and a PhD from the Heller Graduate School of Social Policy at Brandeis University. She completed her post-doctoral training from the NICHD funded Post-Doctoral Program in Developmental Disabilities Research at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professor Magaña was a faculty member in the UW-Madison School of Social Work for 12 years and later served as a Professor at the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her current research includes investigating racial and ethnic disparities among children with autism and developmental disabilities and developing culturally relevant interventions to address these disparities. She has received funding for her research from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institute on Aging (NIA), National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR).