NYC Gazette

Rachael Azad, now an assistant professor at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, has made it her mission to improve the lives of children with autism by fostering collaboration between parents and teachers. Her career, which began as a lead teacher at the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital’s Early Childhood Partial Hospitalization Program, emphasizes the importance of a coordinated approach. Azad observes, “The parents were targeting the same concerns and using the same strategies, and their children just did better.”

Her journey, which began in 2006, led to the development of the "Partners in School" initiative. This implementation package aims to align evidence-based practices between school and home environments. Azad emphasizes, “We’re making sure teachers are trained to use these strategies in their everyday practices and that parents are doing the exact same things at home so we can double the dosage, intensity, and more importantly, the impact.”

Highlighting the gap in training for both educators and parents, Azad insists on the need for real-world application of evidence-based interventions. “I have always thought of the children I was helping in their larger context: family, school, neighborhood, community. It was a natural fit to land in public health," she explains. Azad is committed to advancing communication and strategy alignment between teachers and parents to enhance intervention effectiveness.

Her research goes beyond conventional settings to address broader community challenges. She uses visual schedules to help children adapt to transitions between structured and unstructured environments, maintaining that eliminating unpredictability helps reduce challenges such as meltdowns.

In her collaboration with organizations focused on learning and thinking differences, Azad is addressing the lack of research on Latina women in post-secondary education and employment, seeking to design interventions to meet their specific needs.

Through her teaching on implementation science, Azad advises professionals on how to overcome real-world challenges with innovative strategies. She concludes, “The class I teach is on implementation science in practice. Students in the online program are professionals—established physicians, people in industry or research—who experience real-world implementation challenges.”

Columbia remains committed to upholding civil rights and ensuring non-discriminatory practices in all endeavors.