Dr. Karen Bearss
WALNUT CREEK, Calif., Sept. 16, 2024 – In a move that will allow her to help more families in need of autism care by advancing her highly successful RUBI program, renowned psychologist Karen Bearss, Ph.D., has joined Catalight, one of the largest behavioral health networks in the nation. For Catalight, her arrival enhances the non-profit’s flexible multi-modality treatment options and broadens personalized care for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD).
“Karen Bearss is a pioneer in caregiver-mediated interventions and her name in the field speaks for itself. Her expertise, relationships, academic background and her RUBI program’s track record make her an invaluable addition to our team,” said Catalight Chief Growth Officer Trent Iden. “We’re enthusiastic about integrating RUBI into our offerings and advancing our mutual goal of delivering impactful and accessible care solutions while providing vital resources in both clinical and community settings.”
Dr. Bearss, who joins Catalight as vice president of caregiver-mediated care solutions, co-developed the Research Units in Behavioral Intervention (RUBI) program to support families navigating challenging behaviors in children with autism and other developmental disabilities, whether or not they’ve received a formal diagnosis. RUBI is a structured, 11-session program designed to empower families by bolstering their parenting and behavioral skills toolbox, thereby significantly reducing challenging behaviors and improving adaptive skills.
The partnership comes at a pivotal time when autism prevalence continues to rise, and the industry is experiencing practitioner shortage. As a result, wait lists for autism diagnoses and care can be years in some states and the access gap continues to widen. Parents are frequently told early intervention is key but are unable to get timely services.
Now, more than ever, is when innovative treatment plans like RUBI – along with an array of other Catalight care options – is needed in the behavioral health industry.
“What gets me up every morning and keeps me up at night is access to care – the stories I’ve heard for years about how hard it is for families who want services for their kids but can’t find them,” said Dr. Bearss. “Since the start of RUBI, everything I’ve done has been about expanding access. Catalight shares that same passion. This represents the next level of improving access to care. Our work will grow exponentially together.”
Along with being a standalone program that a wide-variety of providers can teach to parents at high fidelity, RUBI has seen growth outside of formalized ABA systems of care for those families who are waiting for services.
“I see the classic RUBI child as one who struggles through their daily routines – mornings, mealtimes and bedtimes,” said Dr. Bearss. “RUBI practitioners meet with families for an hour weekly in short-term, low-intensity intervention typically via video call to help parents build effective strategies to set their child up for success. Parents notice important reductions in their child’s challenging behavior and improvements to daily living skills.”
Research into RUBI as a standalone intervention proved that it worked remarkably well – culminating in a 2015 study conducted across six universities that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing treatment reduces challenging behaviors by about 50% on average. Of the 180 families involved, 70% reported it worked to significantly improve their child’s behavior while the attrition rate was just 11%.
Dr. Bearss has spent the last decade at the University of Washington building out a training model for providers to learn how to implement RUBI with their families. During that time, she’s built an astounding structure for RUBI through grassroots marketing. The treatment, with manuals, workbooks and materials translated into Spanish, French, Korean, Hebrew, Arabic and Urdu, is being implemented around the world.
“Dr. Bearss has spread RUBI through word-of-mouth and advocacy in the conference circuit alone. The fact that it’s so popular now is a testament to the program itself and its effectiveness,” said Iden. “The impact, when we start to promote RUBI, share it with the broader audience and integrate it into a more comprehensive care framework, will be massive in the way that it will help many more families.”
Catalight’s collaboration with Dr. Bearss will bring RUBI’s proven benefits to a wider audience while enhancing Catalight’s suite of caregiver-mediated care solutions. RUBI reflects Catalight’s ongoing dedication to addressing critical gaps in autism care by providing accessible, evidence-based treatments to families across California and Hawaii, with plans for greater expansion.
“When you develop an intervention, you hope that there is reach. Academia is great for research, study and development but commercialization and clinical expansion of psychosocial interventions is not often an academic goal,” Dr. Bearss said, adding her goal with Catalight includes expansion of the new school-based version of RUBI to support educators and a program for adults and their caregivers. “The opportunity to actually think about a much larger scale-up came about through my conversations with Catalight. By joining Catalight now, we can work together in making the next big wave.”
RUBI was born out of clinical trials for medication that reduced irritability for autistic youth. While the medication proved highly effective, behaviors recurred once the medication was discontinued. The focus in 2004 became combining pharmacological treatments with behavioral intervention, at which point RUBI was developed. Subsequent research demonstrated that integrating RUBI with medication not only reduced the need for higher doses, but also led to more significant positive behavior changes in children. The success prompted Dr. Bearss to expand RUBI as a standalone intervention for parents who didn’t need or want to put their child on powerful antipsychotics, but rather would benefit from learning strategies designed to reduce behaviors like meltdowns and aggression and teach skills of independence to their children.
“Catalight has long embraced the power of parent-mediated interventions. Their commitment to family-centered care and expanding access perfectly aligns to my own vision to provide effective support where it’s needed most,” said Dr. Bearss. “Those are the same reasons RUBI was created. Together, we’ll be able bring care to many more families in need.”
