Our study is the first to provide statistics on opioid use among U.S. Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) applicants. We use an innovative machine-learning method to identify opioids in open-ended text fields in SSDI administrative data. We find that more than 30% of applicants between 2007 and 2017 reported using one or more opioids, a…

Service coordinators (SCs) in Part C early intervention (EI) programs fulfill critical supportive roles assisting families in accessing and successfully navigating services needed for their infants/toddlers identified with delays or disabilities. However, evidence of effective training for SCs is limited. One state scaled up training in the…

Like many other countries, Canada's academic system has been challenged to achieve proportionate representation of historically underrepresented groups. Canadian equity law identifies four designated groups (FDG) for whom conditions of disadvantage shall be corrected: women, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, and members of visible…

A randomized experiment that measures the impact of a social policy in a sample of the population reveals whether the policy will work on average with universal application. An experiment that includes only the subset of the population that volunteers for the intervention generates narrower "proof-of-concept" evidence of whether the…

Child applications and awards for U.S. Supplemental Security Income (SSI) fell sharply at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cumulative applications from April to September 2020 were about 30% lower than applications over the same period in 2019 with substantial variation in rates of decline across local areas. In this article, we explore the…

Several states have invested in 1915(c) Home and Community Based Service (HCBS) Medicaid policies to improve outcomes and reduce costs for children and youth with significant behavioral health needs, or Severe Emotional Disturbance (SED). However, little is known about these programs and the children they serve. Through a retrospective…

Of the record high 122.6 million people forcibly displaced worldwide, about 43.4 million are refugees, and an estimated 15% to 33% have at least one type of disability. Due to structural racism and ableism, many refugees with disabilities find it difficult to access vocational rehabilitation/employment resources, assistive technologies, and…

Promoting the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income (PROMISE), a study of 13,444 randomly assigned youth and their families, includes six model demonstration projects and a technical assistance center funded through the U.S. Department of Education and a national evaluation of the model demonstration projects funded through the…

Population-based research can identify eligibility patterns across e disabilities and cultures, and the Head Start ECLKC gathers relatively controlled data of students in the United States (U.S.) and Puerto Rico, providing an opportunity to directly compare cultures. We compared preschool diagnostic eligibility categories in the U.S. and Puerto…

This exploratory study used the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) to compare the financial well-being of families of adolescents with and without autism. Recognizing the gap in autism research, which predominantly measures financial well-being through household income, this study employed a multidimensional approach, including…

Racially and ethnically diverse youth with disabilities receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits were randomly assigned to usual services, including available school and vocational rehabilitation (VR) transition services, or enhanced case management and transition services through the Wisconsin Promoting Readiness of Minors in SSI…

This article compares state expenditure data to see how the operating budgets of public community colleges specifically, and public higher education institutions generally, have fared over the past 30 years. Data from the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) have long tracked major state expenditure categories, including the…

Purpose: The present article provides a narrative review of Australia's approach toward acquired brain injury (ABI) and proposes how Australia and the United States can collaborate to improve service delivery for persons with ABI and their families with epidemiology, healthcare, prevention, research, and training. Method: A narrative review of…

Research Findings: Engineering play is a new framework for understanding constructive block building as a design process. The current study examined associations between engineering play with wooden unit blocks and mathematics and spatial skills of children with and without disabilities. Participants included 110 preschoolers (44% female; 25%…

The purpose of this study was to conduct a pilot randomized controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of an intervention for enhancing the language development of young children enrolled in home visiting programs. The participants were 59 children (18-30 months old) enrolled in one of three types of home visiting programs. Children's language…