The ECHO effect

Project ECHO (the mantra for which is “All teach, all learn”) uses video-conferencing technology to provide education and case consultation on best practice clinical services, training, and resources for individuals with specific healthcare needs that are difficult to meet locally. The Waisman Center ECHO platform will serve as a diagnostic and treatment training hub to share the center’s expertise on intellectual and developmental disabilities, such as autism, Down syndrome, and cerebral palsy, throughout the state and beyond.

Catherine Kanter named speech-language pathologist of the year

“I then found in speech-language pathology a wonderful marriage of my love for language and communication and helping individuals with disabilities, and came to UW-Madison to complete my graduate degree,” says Kanter, who has worked as a full-time speech-language pathologist, or SLP, at the Waisman Center since June 2018.

Connecting research and clinics to help those with autism

One of the goals of the study is to discover how genetic variations in young people with ASD are related to brain changes that lead to clinical symptoms of the disorder, such as impaired social interaction and repetitive behaviors.

“If you think about it, in between genes and clinical symptoms [of ASD] are changes in brain development,” says Lainhart. “Genes first impact brain development, and as a result of changes in how the brain develops, there are clinical manifestations of what we recognize as ASD.”

Families navigate an autism diagnosis with interventional services, networks

Waisman Center social workers Paola Perez and Erin Thomson were featured guests on the Larry Meiller Show on Wisconsin Public Radio’s the Ideas Network. Perez and Thomson discussed a broad range of autism-related topics including …