Program Information The Center for Autism & Related Disorders was established in 1990 by Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh. Dr. Doreen studied autism treatment for 12 years under the direction of renowned autism treatment scientist Dr. Ivar Lovaas at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Lovaas discovered that intensive early intervention using applied behavior analysis treatment yielded a 47 percent recovery rate among children with autism who participated in his study. Building off these findings, Dr. Doreen and her associates authored a treatment curriculum for children diagnosed with autism now known as the CARD Treatment Approach and opened the first CARD office in Los Angeles, California, in 1990. Dr. Doreen continued to train hundreds of therapists and supervisors on this methodology and has successfully treated and recovered tens of thousands of children. Today, CARD has 19 offices in the United States, one office in Sydney, Australia and one office in Auckland, New Zealand. In addition, CARD provides parent/therapist training and consultation worldwide through its workshop-model services. CARD is committed to remaining at the forefront of research on ABA-based methods of autism assessment and treatment. In August 2009, CARD researchers published the first-ever study to document recovery in a large group of children with autism. "Retrospective Analysis of Clinical Records in 38 Cases of Recovery from Autism," published in the Annals of Clinical Psychiatry, earned CARD's Executive Director, Doreen Granpeesheh, PhD, BCBA-D, the prestigious American Academy of Clinical Psychiatrists 2011 George Winokur Research Award. CARD is equally committed to developing technology to make autism recovery available to professionals and families around the world. Based on over 30 years of research on child development and autism, CARD's breakthrough Web-based tool, Skills??, provides comprehensive skill assessment, individualized curriculum design, and the ability to track treatment progress with automatically-generated graphs and clinical timeline charts. Skills??? is designed to teach over 4,000 age-appropriate skills to children with autism, making it the most in-depth, multidisciplinary system of its kind in the world. With a staff of nearly 1,000 worldwide, CARD strives for success and even recovery for every individual it treats.