Claire Klein, MA

Claire is a clinical psychology intern at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital. She is a PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was a graduate research assistant at the UNC TEACCH Autism Program. Before graduate school, Claire was a research assistant at the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain. She worked on projects to develop treatment outcome measures and evaluate community-implemented interventions for autistic toddlers. At UNC, Claire supported research on and delivered community-based interventions for transition-age autistic youth with and without intellectual disability (e.g., TEACCH School Transition to Employment and Postsecondary Education, T-STEP; Surviving and Thriving in the Real World, STRW). Claire is also a team member of an ACE awarded to Drexel University, Advancing the System of Care for Autistic Older Adults, leveraging Medicaid/Medicare and survey data to examine health and mental health outcomes and service needs among autistic older adults. She co-leads the INSAR Special Interest Group “Bridging Silos: Building Collaborative Efforts for Autism Research in Midlife and Older Age” and previously co-led the group “Raising the Bar for Quality and Reporting Standards of Autism Intervention Science”.

In both her clinical work and research, Claire is interested in a lifespan approach to creating, evaluating, and disseminating clinical services for people across the autism spectrum. Her dissertation research is focused on autism and aging, including assessment of cognitive decline in autism, service use and needs among middle-aged and older autistic adults, and measurement of “outcomes” among middle-aged autistic adults diagnosed as children.