Developing leadership skills through policy education and advocacy is integral to LEND training. In recognition of Autism Acceptance Month, the Autism Consortium of Texas LEND (ACT LEND) invited LoneStar LEND to join them at the Capitol in downtown Austin on Friday, April 8, 2022. Scott Daigle, Public Policy Director at the Texas Council for Developmental Disabilities, provided a full day of policy training to the LEND trainees.

At the Conference on Research Innovations in Early Intervention in San Diego, February 2022, Dr. Landa brought together current and past mentees to support their career development and foster exchanges between early investigators from diverse cultural, racial, and geographic backgrounds. Each of the mentees had the honor of presenting cutting edge research at this very prestigious scientific meeting.

Sydney Walls, a Kansas LEND Public Health Trainee, conducted public health research over the deficit of intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) knowledge in family medicine providers at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC). Sydney's research earned her the Midwestern Public Health Training Center Field Placement Award (a U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration program), and her presentation over her findings at KUMC's Student Research Forum was also awarded first place in her platform and was a finalist out of over 100 projects.

Indiana LEND psychology trainee Amani Khalil was awarded the Division 33 APA Student Research Award and will present her poster at the APA conference in Minneapolis in August. Amani Khalil is a PhD Candidate in Counseling Psychology at Purdue University. Her poster is titled "Help-Seeking Barriers for Racial-Ethnic Minority Caregivers Accessing Autism Interventions: A Systematic Review" and shares about work related to both her LEND leadership project and her dissertation.

WI LEND, located at the Waisman Center UCEDD, introduced a new staff role of Peer Mentor at the beginning of the new grant funding cycle. Ida Winters and Stasia Wilson, both recent graduates of the WI LEND program, were hired to fill the roles of Family Peer Mentor and Disability Advocacy Peer Mentor, respectively. Ida and Stasia were both standout trainees, and we are so excited to add them both to our staff, said the Training Director, Gail Chodron. WI LEND has had trainees and staff in the family discipline for over 15 years, and added self-advocacy trainees 10 years ago.

This spring, MNLEND Community Fellow Julie Li Yang is engaging in outreach activities to promote Help Me Grow resources with the Hmong community in the Twin Cities and surrounding area. Yang is mentored by Dr. Jennifer Hall-Lande in the Minnesota LEND program at the Institute on Community Integration (ICI) at the University of Minnesota. By promoting early monitoring and early developmental screening resources at tabling events and through social media, Yang found that parents are often reluctant to discuss early intervention services due to the shame and stigma surrounding autism diagnosis, specific to the Hmong community.

AUCD is excited to announce that recruitment is now open for the 2022 AUCD Emerging Leaders Map! This year's theme is "Supporting Resiliency and Self-Determination for All."

Medical geneticist Melissa Wasserstein, MD, and neuroscientist Steven Walkley, DVM, PhD, explain how they established Gene Teams, in which parents, physicians, and interested scientists gather to share knowledge and experiences of Rare Disease.

On February 26th, MN LEND fellow, Kalee Abu-Ghazaleh, participated in the Give Kids a Smile event at the University of Minnesota (UMN) School of Dentistry. Kalee organized an outreach table with "Learn the Signs, Act Early (LTSAE)" developmental resources. The event served 96 children and families from underserved communities and included interprofessional collaboration with other UMN health programs. Programs included: medical school, speech pathology, public health, veterinary, and dental hygiene.

A team of LEND fellows at the University of Minnesota Institute for Community Integration are valued members of the PATH-PWIDD project.The team has been instrumental in research and developing processes to further the project.Through a grant front the Administration for Community Living, multiple universities are working on conducting a scoping review of literature around training inter-profesional health students (medical, dental etc.) about IDD. In the coming year, this information will be used to develop an interdisciplinary curriculum to strengthen the healthcare workforce to appropriate support the needs of the IDD community.