Annual Report 2007-08

Proven to help

In a small room at the KU Medical Center, a young woman named Stephanie Marks engages a 5-year-old girl named Grace. They take turns coloring, passing a red crayon back and forth. Marks asks Grace to touch her nose, ears and toes; compliance earns her a star. Five stars earn her a granola bar.

Child’s play, but also serious work. Grace has autism. Marks is in training, planning to incorporate new skills into her speech therapy practice to better serve children and families affected by autism and related disorders. KU’s new Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training coordinates the sessions and evaluates Marks’ progress.

Growing numbers of children, now about 1 out of 150, are identified with autism spectrum disorders, and much is unknown about these conditions. The center’s mission is to resolve those unknowns.

“We’ve demonstrated the effectiveness of early intervention,” says Debra Kamps, director of the center. “There’s not nearly so much knowledge about adults, and their needs get far less attention than necessary.”

Headquartered at KU’s Edwards Campus, this new center is one of 13 housed within the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies. Fittingly, its research will cross the life span, seeking prenatal causes, developing better diagnostic tools for young children, learning to foster social skill development in older children and building employment support and other services for adults.

“Long-term, I hope the center will be a state and national resource, viewed as a source of knowledge about evidence-based practices,” Kamps says.

Service and outreach
Across KU, commitment to public service and outreach has prompted creation of many programs that bring education, research, health care and community service into the broader world.

Private donors support many of these programs. A few examples:

  • The KU Center for Telemedicine and Telehealth maintains 65 video-based medical consultation sites around the state.
  • In FY08 alone, almost 8,500 pre-K through 12th grade students attended performances conducted just for them at the Lied Center in Lawrence.
  • Kansas Audio Reader provides reading and information service for about 6,300 blind, visually impaired and print-disabled individuals in Kansas and western Missouri.