Faculty Spotlight: Personalizing Autism Interventions with Emily Kuschner, PhD

Emily Kuschner, PhD

Editor's Note: Meet the diverse, dedicated, and distinctive faculty who are discovering and developing pediatric life-changing solutions at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute, in our monthly Faculty Spotlight series. This year, we're learning about the unique hobbies of our faculty that help them unwind and relax after working hard to improve pediatric health and care. In this Q&A, we meet Emily Kuschner, PhD, a clinical psychologist and scientist in the Program for Advanced Imaging Research (PAIR), the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (DCAPBS), and Center for Autism Research (CAR). Stay tuned for more from our Faculty Spotlight series throughout the year.

Why did you choose to focus on your research specialty?

My work aims to develop or adapt personalized interventions to fill critical gaps in available support for autistic youth. I want to help solve the puzzle of finding the right fit with treatment. Given the heterogeneity of presentation in autism – according to Dr. Stephen Shore, "If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism" – it is crucial for people to receive the right treatment at the right time and in the right context.

My research programs are focused on identifying treatment options tailored to this heterogeneity to support a child and their family. I decided that if that treatment didn't exist, maybe I could adapt or create something myself that would fill a gap in the field and improve everyday life for autistic children and their families looking for support.

In the long-term, I hope my research can contribute to each person with autism having treatments and supports that are tailored for them, yield meaningful outcomes for their everyday life, and advance our scientific knowledge.

Can you tell us about research projects that you are excited about?

I developed the Building Up Food Flexibility and Exposure Treatment (BUFFET) program, a 14-week group-based treatment to address food selectivity (picky eating) in school-age autistic youth. Existing treatments focus on early childhood, and there are no options for children over age 8. BUFFET offers a treatment approach that prioritizes self-determination, independence, and generalizing skills to the real world — all treatment tenets crucial for pre-adolescent children.

The BUFFET program was developed in collaboration with Hannah Morton, PhD, previously a clinical research coordinator in CAR; former CAR postdoctoral fellows Brenna Maddox, PhD, and Ashley de Marchena, PhD; Laura Anthony, PhD, a Professor of Psychiatry at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; and Judy Reaven, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

As BUFFET matures as a treatment, I am acutely aware that a 14-week group-based treatment is hard for community providers to implement. To address this concern, we've adapted BUFFET to be five weeks and given in individual therapy. We call this new version BUFFET-Snack. I am excited to see how children and families respond to this briefer treatment model and to begin thinking about when and for whom BUFFET and BUFFET-Snack are each best suited.

I am also excited about the work my colleagues and I are doing within PAIR to ensure that all children with autism can participate in neuroimaging research. Historically, people with autism who have intellectual disability and limited language skills have been largely excluded from brain imaging research. This approach has been inequitable and limited the impact of brain imaging research for all autistic people. To make our brain imaging studies accessible to people with autism and intellectual disability, we developed MEG-PLAN, a Protocol for Low Language/Cognitive Ability Neuroimaging for use with magnetoencephalography brain imaging.

As we continue to refine MEG-PLAN and other teams refine their approaches for different brain imaging technologies, I am also excited to partner with a scientific community advisory board to figure out how we can help neuroimaging research teams use these protocols to include autistic people with intellectual disability in their brain imaging research.

What do you enjoy doing in your free time when you're not working on research?

I love spending time with family and friends. We try to take advantage of Philadelphia's foodie city identity whenever we can. Of course, most days my 10-year-old and 5-year-old would choose the revolving sushi restaurant and its drink robot over all other options. A real treat is when I can train up to Manhattan for a night and see a Broadway show.

How do you balance your research work with your personal interests?

Balance often feels like an elusive goal and a moving target in academic medical research life. Lately, I've been paying more attention to when I can adjust my schedule and create those win-win days across multiple domains in life. My golden retriever and I really enjoy when I can finish an end-of-day call while taking him on a longer walk around the neighborhood before launching into evening family life.