History

Over the course of its history, the KIDDRC has excelled in a number of areas, but the KIDDRC is perhaps best recognized for its role in generating effective behavioral interventions aimed at improving the outcomes of individuals with IDD, and for its basic-science discoveries with regard to the underlying biology of typical and atypical development. 

The first instantiation of the KIDDRC was established by Richard Schiefelbusch within the Kansas state-supported Bureau of Child Research during the 1960s. The KIDDRC has provided five decades of tangible and concrete progress in the field as a direct outcome of its presence, and holds clear promise for substantial impact into the future.  At its inception, the themes of the KIDDRC were language and communication disorders, the importance of the early environment in IDD, and the neurobiology of IDD. As one might expect, the science within each of these themes has developed and evolved and although the KIDDRC portfolio has evolved with it, the themes themselves remain remarkably functional. With the evolution of the second theme into a broader program on IDD risk and intervention, the themes still accurately characterize the KIDDRC.

Over the course of its history, the KIDDRC has excelled in a number of areas, but has become especially well recognized for its major role in generating effective behavioral interventions for improving the outcomes of individuals with IDD and in delineating basic knowledge of the underlying biology of typical and atypical development.