Inside Behavior Analysis
Volume 3 | 2011 | Number 2 | Online ISSN: 2151-4704
Delaware Valley ABA
By James E. Connell, Jr.
This past year has been very informative for the Delaware Valley ABA (DVABA) community. To begin our fall 2010 lecture series, representatives from Aetna Behavioral Health were invited to discuss the new autism insurance legislation in Pennsylvania. Of particular interest to the local DVABA community were concerns about becoming a "member provider" and the identification of appropriate service billing codes in the absence of specific applied behavior analysis codes (e.g., functional analysis or FBA).
Following the Aetna Behavioral Health presentation, Dr. Betsy Swope gave a very exciting description of a joint attention intervention that also facilitated the acquisition of tacting behavior. Dr. Swope is a recent graduate of Dr. Philip Hineline and the Temple University psychology program.
Barry Katz, founder of Operant Systems, began our spring series. Mr. Katz demonstrated a new software application he developed for collecting data on hand-held devices. The application and device have great potential to make real-time data collection portable, and thus enable data collection across the day.
Our final presentation for the 2010–2011 year featured a representative from the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare's Bureau of Autism Services. The discussion highlighted the urgency to provide employment opportunities and employment specific social skill interventions for the adult autism spectrum disorder population as they move in mass out of the education system.
Next year DVABA will feature "Diamonds in the Field: Perspectives from Philip Hineline and Saul Axelrod." Drs. Hineline and Axelrod recently announced they were retiring at the end of the 2011 spring and fall semesters, respectively. Temple University ABA and DVABA were founded by Drs. Hineline and Axelrod nearly 20 years ago. They trained dozens of students, many of whom have gone on to highly successful academic, research, and clinical careers. We are fortunate to have learned from them and we are grateful that they will continue to be active members of DVABA and the larger behavior analysis community.