Current Research

[Study logo has a rainbow circle around the study acronym and full name in brown texts, against a pinkish tan background

PUSHED-AT: PUberty & Sexual Health EDucation for Autistic Teens]

Effective puberty and sexual health education promotes body awareness and agency and normalizes conversations about consent, sexual and gender identities, and sexual behaviors. Unfortunately, autistic youth are frequently denied this key educational benefit. With this research, we hope to contribute to autistic individuals making safer and more informed decisions regarding sexual health. A validation of the educational tool that we use could help autistic individuals learn ways to have healthy romantic relationships, sexual behaviors, and reproductive awareness before new experiences and/or problems occur.

Pilot project funded by the Autism Intervention Research on Physical Health (AIR-P) Scholars Program: Gender, Sexuality, and Reproductive Health Research Node. 

[Study title "Pubertal Timing: Gynecological Age & Peak Height Velocity" and under the title is an image of six different youth of different races and ethnicity, each wearing different colors of the rainbow] 

Adolescence is a complex developmental process with overlapping processes. Maturation is multifaceted identified by chronological age, growth, increasing hormone levels, brain growth, and puberty; each of which are correlated as well as uniquely explain variability of internalizing symptoms. An integrative investigation of the developmental process combining each maturation factors and parsing each of these factors' unique contribution is limited and a methodological challenge. Our project aims to disentangle developmental factors and to use an integrative, novel methodological approach in examining developmental metrics of pubertal timing and onset in neurotypical adolescents.