Newly funded: Increasing the amount of accessible service dogs for people with Autism

With $200,000 in new funding from the University of Minnesota Office for Academic and Clinical Affairs Faculty Research Development Grant, researchers from the College of Veterinary Medicine and the Medical School, led by Molly McCue, DVM, MS, PhD, DACVIM, and Suma Jacob, MD, PhD, will address the critical need to more effectively identify and train assistance dogs (AD) that serve people with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). ASD affects roughly one in 54 Americans and evidence supporting animal-assisted interventions and human-animal interactions in ASD has been growing steadily over the years. Recent research suggests AD handling benefits children with ASD—and their parents—in various ways. With combined expertise in ASD, neurodevelopment, statistical genetics, and computational modeling, the researchers aim to determine AD behavioral traits that correlate with the attachment and positive impact scales collected from participating families. Combining behavioral and genetic measures, the team will develop a genetic test that identifies AD candidates and informs and improves training and placement decisions early in a dog’s development. This work will increase training success rates and reduce the economic burden to the service dog industry. Ultimately, the team hopes the research leads to larger numbers of ADs with ASD-specific training that will benefit ASD children and their families. In the future, these techniques may be extended to a wider range of service/assistance dog roles, impacting public health on a broader scale. The funding begins in March 2021 and ends in February 2023.