2015 Millie & Richard Brock Lecture in Pediatrics
The Collateral Effects of Autism on Families: Why Professionals Should Care”
Jan Blacher, PhD
May 7, 2015  6:00 – 7:30 pm

Please join us for the 2015 Millie and Richard Brock Lecture in Pediatrics. This year’s guest lecturer is Jan Blacher, PhD. Dr. Blacher is a Distinguished Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education, and Founding Director of the SEARCH Family Autism Research Center, University of California at Riverside, California.

Children and adolescents with autism have three times as many clinically significant mental health and behavioral disorders as typically developing children. Thus, when professionals are working with a child with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) they are working with more than just a child with autism. This lecture will provide a review of studies from a longitudinal dataset that underscore the collateral effects of co-morbid disorders on parents. Discussion will focus on how to move the field forward by taking co-morbid disorders in ASD more seriously in assessment, treatment, differential effects on families and consideration of culture.

Jan Blacher, PhD received her A.B. in Psychology from Brown University and her Ph.D. in Special Education/Developmental Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently Distinguished Professor of Education and UC Presidential Chair in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside. She has a joint appointment as Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA.

Dr. Blacher is known nationally for her research on developmental disabilities, and for her expertise in autism and special educational programming. She is frequently asked to appear as an Expert Witness in contested cases involving right-to-education suits for children with autism. Dr. Blacher is she an Editor for the Journal of Intellectual Disability Research. She is also Consulting Editor or on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, the American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, and Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities. Dr. Blacher served last year as President of Division 33 (Intellectual Disabilities and Autism) of the American Psychological Association, and continues on the Executive Committee.

Dr. Blacher is the Founding Director of SEARCH, a Family Autism Resource Center established at UC Riverside. Her research, which is longitudinal in nature, focuses on the family context of children and adolescents with and without developmental disabilities, including predictors of later psychopathology. She has published on family coping in Anglo and Latino families, and is currently studying the cultural context of autism and the transition to early schooling for children with autism. Her work is funded the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). In addition to having Fellow status in three research organizations, Dr. Blacher has also been selected as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).