Approximately 50% of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit disruptive behaviors such as tantrums, aggression, and noncompliance that significantly impact social, adaptive, and academic functioning. The RUBI program is an evidence-based parent-mediated intervention that improves disruptive behavior in children with ASD. RUBI is offered to caregivers in specialty mental health clinics, which requires families to overcome access barriers such as provider referrals, transportation, wait lists, and health insurance. Considering schools serve as the primary intervention setting for children with ASD, and teachers and school staff often struggle to address challenging behavior, there is an opportunity to meaningfully improve care by adapting RUBI for delivery in schools. As a low-intensity treatment model, RUBI in Educational Settings (RUBIES) would be responsive to barriers to implementation commonly seen in many school-based practices for children with ASD – namely their high resource demands (i.e. materials, staff, training, data collection).

The culmination of this project will be an end user vetted RUBIES curriculum in preparation for a large-scale implementation trial in public elementary schools. This addresses the critical need for accessible behavioral interventions in schools where children with ASD spend most of their time, potentially reducing the barriers families face in accessing specialty mental health services while providing teachers and school staff with evidence-based tools to address challenging behaviors in the classroom setting.