TRIAD Community Informed Practice

TRIAD recognizes feedback and direction from neurodivergent people as an essential component to its mission of empowering autistic people and those with other disabilities by honoring their identities across all endeavors. TRIAD engages with self-advocates in many capacities in which lived experience and the expertise of autistic and other neurodivergent people informs and guides our work both internally and externally to TRIAD. ​ We want to ensure the perspective of autistic people is embedded throughout/guiding all of our work (e.g. internal resources, professional development for educators and organizations, caregiver training). ​

TRIAD Specific Advisory Committee  ▼

A formative process for soliciting feedback from advisory committee members regarding the structure/process of meetings and action steps. ​

  • To allow for the lived experiences of our advisory committee members to inform and guide our work, we will ask members to share experiences, resources, and feedback in order to build TRIAD's awareness and knowledge of foundational concepts such as language and terminology, as well as important content topics to address through our Outreach work. ​
  • TRIAD and advisory committee members may have the opportunity to engage in additional collaborations to develop resources and materials, depending on advisory committee's interest and availability. ​

Advisory Committee Members:

  • Armando Bernal, BCBA, Clinical Manager Cole Health
  • Emelyne Bingham, Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music
  • Dave Caudel, Vanderbilt University FRIST Center for Autism and Innovation
  • Brian Middleton, BCBA ABA Interventions, LLC
  • Zack Williams, Vanderbilt University Medical Scientist Training Program, Neuroscience Graduate Program / Department of Hearing & Speech Sciences

Products Created by Advisory Committee:
The following resources were created with direction, input, and feedback from TRIAD’s Advisory Committee. All materials were guided and written by autistic self-advocates.

All-Access Inclusion Network Advisory Committee  ▼

Committee aims to offer more meaningful opportunities for input and feedback from network members including autistic people, other self-advocates, parent-advocates, disability organizations, and a collection of community organizations that represent the network as a whole.

Duties of the advisory committee include:

  • Guide direction of network
  • Set goals for network and network members
  • Discuss appropriate verbiage based off feedback from autistic community
  • Identify most pressing topics to address with network

Advisory Committee Members

State Initiatives – Tennessee Association for Behavior Analysis Policy and Practice Committee  ▼

While still in development, TRIAD leaders are working with colleagues at Tennessee Association for Behavior Analysis (TABA) to develop a sustainable community advisory council (CAC). The TABA CAC will provide guidance and feedback on large scale decisions across the association, as well as providing important input on activities focused in the quality  improvement of behavior analysis services within the state.

  • This will include autistic and other neurodivergent, experts, advocates, and self-advocates. The CAC will also include those with other disabilities, caregivers, other providers, and more.

National Involvement  ▼

Currently, Pablo Juárez, TRIAD co-director, is collaboratively leading a workgroup through Association of University Centers on Disabilities. The workgroup is focused on the quality of improvement of university-level training in applied behavior analysis through the development of community-informed resources.

  • ​The workgroup includes autistic people on the leadership team and throughout.
  • The workgroup collaborates directly with various shareholders, including autistic and other neurodivergent people across all aspects of resource development, from conceptualization to dissemination.