Lauren Bishop

Associate Professor Lauren Bishop’s research uses epidemiological, advanced computational, and qualitative methods to characterize disparities in health and wellbeing in adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities as they age. Her National Institutes of Health-funded program of research focuses specifically on autistic adults and how their unique mental, physical, and social needs can be properly understood over the life course, to inform treatment, services, policy, and best practices. 

Dr. Bishop directs the Aging and Health Equity in Autism and Developmental Disabilities (AHEADD) Team at the Waisman Center, where she is a principal investigator. She is also an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty, the Institute for Diversity Science, the Center for Demography of Health and Aging, and the Center for Aging Research and Education. She is the recipient of the 2022 Deborah K. Padgett Early Career Achievement Award from the Society for Social Work and Research, a 2022-2024 Vilas Associate Professorship from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a 2024-2029 H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2022, Dr. Bishop was appointed to the Athletic Board and the University Research Council at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a member of the editorial boards for Autism, Autism Research, and Social Work in Mental Health. 

Currently, Dr. Bishop is building upon her early work which identified high levels of physical and psychiatric morbidity and increased mortality risk among autistic adults using a combination of administrative and prospectively collected data. Her current projects focus on: (1) developing a novel, machine-learning derived mortality risk index for autistic older adults using national Medicare claims data (R01AG082873); (2) investigating whether aging is early or accelerated in autism and how that is related to health, cognitive and brain outcome in a large, longitudinal sample autistic adults (R01MH132218); and (3) determining whether state laws prohibiting discrimination in organ transplantation mitigate ableism against kidney transplant candidates with intellectual and developmental disabilities (R01HD116245). Dr. Bishop’s research on outcomes for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, and USNews. She regularly publishes in outlets such as JAMA Neurology, Autism, Autism Research, Autism in Adulthood, and the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. 

Her social work practice experience includes roles as a school counselor and as a social skills group leader for autistic children and youth. Dr. Bishop is also broadly interested in identifying strategies to strengthen the social work workforce that provides care to individuals with developmental disabilities in the community. She particularly enjoys mentoring doctoral students who are interested in building research careers focused on disability policy, outcomes for autistic adults, and/or social work interventions to support the inclusion of people with developmental disabilities in their communities. 

Before her appointment to the faculty of the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work in 2017, Dr. Bishop completed postdoctoral training in intellectual and developmental disabilities research at the Waisman Center. She holds a BA in Psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a MSW and PhD in Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh.