Presidential Address, 2013: A Charge for the Future

Abstract

On behalf of the Conference Planning Committee, it is my sincere pleasure to welcome you to the ‘‘Queen City,’’ Charlotte, North Carolina, and the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD) 136th Annual Meeting. The theme of this year’s conference is research, practice, policy—and there’s no better setting for such a conference than the Carolinas! This year’s AAIDD annual conference promises to be a forum where researchers, clinicians, practitioners, educators, policymakers, and advocates will be able to share cutting-edge research, effective practices, and valuable information on important policy initiatives. I want to start my presidential address by thanking all the attendees for joining us for the AAIDD 136th Annual Meeting. This conference could not be the success it is without your presence and participation. I also want to thank all our colleagues from across the United States and the world who traveled to Charlotte to present their work and share their ideas and findings with us. I’ll come back to this point in a minute. I would be remise if I did not acknowledge the important contribution to the success of this meeting of all those who provided their time and wisdom on the Conference Planning Committee and the Local Arrangements Committee as well as the large group of volunteers, and of course none of this could happen without the diligent work of the AAIDD staff and Dr. Maggie Nygren, AAIDD executive director and CEO. Please join me in thanking all these individuals in making this annual meeting the success that it is. This year’s annual meeting was preceded by a series of exciting and stimulating preconference workshops on topics ranging from findings from the AAIDD Cuba Delegation, the National Task Group on Dementia, DirectCourse’s Comprehensive Competency-Based Training Approach, Supports Intensity Scale and Individual Support Planning, and Ethical Issues for Psychologists. We opened our conference with a blue-ribbon plenary panel on research, practice, and policy in the area of autism spectrum disorders. We heard three fantastic presentations from Drs. Joe Piven (University of North Carolina), Connie Kasari (University of California–Los Angeles), and Susan L. Parish (Brandeis University). The opening plenary was an excellent example of the richness and importance of research, intervention, and policy issues and their interplay in the area of autism spectrum disorders. Our other panel presentation had a distinguished group of federal partners, including Drs. Melissa Parisi (Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; NICHD), Gloria Krahn (National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; NCBDD CDC), and George Jesien (Association of University Centers on Disabilities). This illustrious federal panel discussed the importance and role played by these agencies in supporting research and practice as well as the importance of policy matters in continued funding of these programs in the area of intellectual and developmental disabilities. Our biggest challenge this year in organizing the conference was reviewing and evaluating the great number of high-quality proposals submitted. We received almost 300 proposal submissions from across the United States and more than a dozen countries around the world. The conference was rich with 24 break-out panel presentations on topics including aging, health, employment, quality of life, transition, cross-cultural issues, end-of-life, forensic, supports, direct support workforce, inclusion, systems change, self-advocacy, spirituality, parenting, funding issues, and postsecondary education. In addition to these rich break-out sessions, we had more than 150 stimulating poster presentations from students, recent graduates, early careers professionals, established professionals, and researchers from around the world. Today and tomorrow, our conference wraps with a series of postconference workshops that will offer continuing education units on a variety of INTELLECTUAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES