Dr. Juan Lopez is the Associate Director of Quality Improvement for Behavior Interventions with twenty years of experience working with individuals with autism and their caregivers. 

The Quality Improvement department is one of Behavior Interventions’ most important assets. Led by Dr. Juan Lopez this department is focused on developing training material for our clinical staff. Their work has impacted the way we, at Behavior Interventions, deliver services. Not only by providing our staff with training tools and resources, but because this also improves the quality of the services we provide. 

Dr. Lopez is also a member of the Cultural Competency Committee. 

We asked Dr. Lopez a few questions about his work as an Associate Director and his involvement in the Cultural Competency Committee.

1. What is the most important part of your role within Quality Improvement? And how is it beneficial for our staff in Behavior Interventions?

The most important part of my role within Quality Improvement is to promote, design or monitor the implementation of state-of-the-art behavioral analytic programs that benefit our clients, their caregivers, and our clinical staff. In addition, this benefits our staff because they are exposed to new technologies, training programs, new and better clinical practices, and novel to ways to work with their clients and their caregivers.

2. Take us through the process of creating a training plan for our clinical staff? How do you determine what are the most important topics to address?

Developing a training program starts with assessing the needs of our clinical team. Once that is determined, the next step is to decide what are the key concepts and skills to be learned. Typically, I look for concepts and skills that are foundational and enhance the possibility of future learning. For example, we have a training on Discrete Trial Teaching that is foundational to learn about the PEAK Curriculum. Then those concepts and skills are developed into learning units that are uploaded by the digital media department into the Central Reach Learning Management System. Finally, we ask for feedback about each training course to improve our processes and products.

3. What do you enjoy the most about being part of the Cultural Competency Committee? Why is it important for a company like Behavior Interventions to have a committee like this?

The CCC is a great opportunity to get to know and collaborate with like-minded staff in the company with an interest in cultural competency and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Having the CCC is important because it can support diversity efforts. Our company has a very diverse cultural and ethnic composition and the CCC aims to learn more about it. Having the CCC sends a message to the entire company that BI values these kinds of initiatives.