Gabriella (“Gabbie”) Liwanag Canning earned her MPH from the University of Florida, and she is honored to join the SMART Center as a Research Coordinator supporting the RUBIES project. Gabbie is passionate about empowering communities, especially youth and family units from underserved backgrounds, to take charge of their health and wellbeing. Her research interests include understanding and addressing health disparities from an ecological perspective as well as the intersection between public health and technology like machine learning. In times of rest and relaxation, she enjoys spending time with her family, nerding out to comics, and baking (and eating) obscene amounts of bread.
This study will test the effectiveness of the newly-redesigned paraeducator-delivered RUBI for use in Educational Settings (RUBIES) intervention compared to usual care training in reducing disruptive behavior in 80 elementary-school children with ASD. This study also will examine paraeducator- and child-level mechanistic pathways of the RUBIES intervention.