Sarah Dababnah, PhD, MPH, MSW

January 24, 2022 at 9 AM Eastern Time

Sarah Dababnah, PhD, MPH, MSW is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore School of Social Work (United States), a US Fulbright Scholar at the American University in Cairo (Egypt), and a Faculty Affiliate at Yonsei University School of Social Welfare (South Korea). She specializes in practice, policy and research related to the health and well-being of families of individuals with intellectual and developmental differences. Dr. Dababnah’s research focuses on family-centered, community-engaged and culturally relevant strategies to address racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in autism service access. Dr. Dababnah received specialized training in early childhood and disability practice, research, and policy at the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities (Chapel Hill, NC), the Kennedy Krieger Institute (Baltimore, MD), the Columbia University National Center for Children in Poverty (New York, NY), and the Jacobs Institute of Women's Health (Washington, DC). She is also a former Peace Corps Volunteer, and earned advanced degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Johns Hopkins University. 

Alycia Halladay, Chief Science Officer at ASF

January 26, 2022 at 8 PM Eastern Time

Alycia Halladay is the Chief Science Officer for the Autism Science Foundation, where she oversees the scientific activities, grants, and initiatives of ASF.  The Autism Science Foundation focuses on investments in early career researchers to both improve scientific discovery while training the next generation of scientists using cutting edge technologies.  These awards include pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, post-undergraduate awards, undergraduate awards, COVID-19 research grants, the Autism Sisters Project, the Baby Siblings Research Consortium and the Alliance for the Genetic Etiologies of Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Autism.  In addition, the Autism Science Foundation provides outreach and communication support to the Autism BrainNet, helping to explain the importance of this program to families and individuals with ASD.  She also produces a weekly podcast aimed specifically at explaining scientific information to the public. Prior to joining ASF in 2014, she served as the Senior Director of Clinical and Environmental Sciences at Autism Speaks.  There, she helped lead the “Early Access to Care” Initiative, which aimed to lower the age of diagnosis for autism and improve access to evidence based services.  She also managed the environmental science portfolio and the worked closely with events to communicate science to the public.  She has authored over two dozen peer reviewed papers in science journals. Alycia also serves as the President of the Board of Directors for the Phelan McDermid Syndrome Foundation, co-chairs the Research Workforce Development working group of the HRA and is a member of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee of the NIH.  She received a PhD in biopsychology from Rutgers in 2001 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of NJ in 2004.  She still holds a faculty appointment at Rutgers.    She has a 10 year old daughter with ASD.

Young Shin Kim, MD, PhD

January 28, 2022 at 2 PM Eastern Time

Young Shin Kim, MD, MS, MPH, PhD, is a Professor of Psychiatry and Epidemiology & Biostatistics, and a Director of the UCSF Center for ASD and Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDDs) and Psychiatric Genetic Epidemiology Program at the University of California San Francisco. Dr. Kim is a Yale trained Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist who also has an MPH from Yale and a PhD from UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Her research is focused on the exploration of the distribution of childhood onset neuropsychiatric disorders and disruptive behavioral problems including autism and bullying, and on the understanding of the causes of these conditions, including genetics and environmental risk factors as well as their interactions. To achieve these goals, a large number of children and their families are recruited from the community, survey and biological sample collections are carried out, and laboratory analyses are followed. 

The core of Dr. Kim’s research is built on the community outreach efforts for those in need, provision of services and advocacy for children with psychiatric illnesses and their families, and public awareness campaign. In order to examine the prevalence of ASD in a suburban city in Korea, for the first time, Dr. Kim and her colleagues have not only worked closely with the Board of Education to develop the foundation for her landmark ASD prevalence research that reported much higher number of children, 2.6% struggling with autism, of which 2/3’s were unidentified and untreated in the community, but she has played a crucial role in helping the City develop a model program for mental health screening and intervention. While mental health problems have been hidden and stigmatizing in Korea, Dr. Kim and her colleagues were able to show school and city officials that early assessment and intervention can enhance the success of their children.  With Dr. Kim’s support, the City successfully launched a city-funded, public program, “Sound Schools Project” which screens 7-year-old children as they enter the school system.  For those screening positive, they receive a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation and intervention services, necessary, all without charge. This program was successful not only for the early identification and intervention of childhood mental disorders, but also for the public awareness. In 2014, Dr. Kim’s contribution to the scientific community by her outstanding research and community outreach effort has resulted in a receipt of a prestigious “Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers” in US. Leveraging already established infrastructure and research design in the community, her team continues to examine 7-year cumulative incidence of ASD in a prospective design for successive birth cohorts since 2007. Additionally, a genetic epidemiological study of ASD is underway with epidemiologically-ascertained Korean ASD cohort in which the phenotype is carefully determined using state-of-the-art, standardized assessment methods and to generate hypotheses about genotypes, environments and gene-environmental interactions.   

Dr. Kim also examined the prevalence of bullying and its psychosocial correlates, including suicidality in community adolescents in Korea. Her work made it clear that a large number of children and adolescents are experiencing bullying and, while it is common, it is anything but a normative experience for these children.  She demonstrated that many children are suffering from the adverse effects of bullying, because bullying is a cause of psychopathology, and bullying increases the risk for suicidal ideations and behaviors. Based on these evidence-based knowledge, Dr. Kim continued to work with her colleagues to implement anti-bullying interventions by working with the public television station to develop televised public service announcements, distributing an instructional manual for classroom activities, and administration of anti-bullying program in the Chicago Public Schools and, later in the suburban, DuPage County School, as well as schools in Northern Indiana. 

Dr. Kim’s research career on autism and bullying has always taken place in a community context. She continues to demonstrate that delivering reliable, evidence-based knowledge and skills to the broad community can lead to reductions in stigma, changes in policy and improvement in the lives of youth and families facing ASD, bullying and other conditions that are amenable to effective intervention to improve the lives of children and our communities.