Association for Behavior Analysis International

The COVID-19 global pandemic of 2020 and the ensuing emergency guidelines had potential to limit the delivery of essential ABA-based Autism services. While literature outside of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) has demonstrated efficacy of remote, video-conference modality for medical care, (i.e. telehealth or telepractice), replicable models of ABA-based telehealth were limited in ABA literature prior to 2020. In response to the public health crisis, a protocol modification assessment (PMA) and treatment selection matrix for modifying ABA programs for direct telehealth was developed and published in an emergency issue of Behavior Analysis in Practice (Rodriguez, 2020). The first panelist will present a model for training and implementation of the PMA in a multi-site provider organization, including confidence self-assessment results from the participating behavior analysts; the second panelist will present client outcomes in the form of pre- and post-implementation assessment change scores. A third panelist will share an innovative applied research approach to modification of a well-known curriculum (PEAK), in which the materials were transformed into an interactive video game that allowed for remote, highly engaging implementation. The panelists will offer guidance for future implementation and evaluation.

Participants should be familiar with the Professional and Ethical Compliance Code for Behavior Analysts (BACB(R) 2014, including considerations for competence to practice and efficacy of services); a review of literature related to telehealth service delivery (e.g. Ferguson et al., 2019); and PEAK Curriculum (Dixon, 2008) and its applications (Belisle, 2018) will offer participants context for engagement.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 1400 clients were transitioned to telehealth ABA services across 50+ regions of a multi-site provider organization. Many clients’ services were shifted within 1-2 weeks of the emergency orders; some were transitioned within days. While the modality of treatment offered clear benefits (i.e. continuity of care; provisioning of essential services without the risk of viral transmission), telehealth ABA has not been evaluated widely. Questions of efficacy are central to ethical compliance and provision of evidence-based, medically necessary treatment; therefore, clinical outcomes are urgently needed in order to determine whether funders will continue to adopt telehealth once the pandemic ends. This presenter will show an initial view of aggregated outcomes data, using pre- and post-assessment assessment change scores. The Vineland 3 is the primary measure of clinical outcomes in this presentation; the author will make recommendations for complementary measures to be used in future analysis.