Mission

There are an estimated 7 million people with mental retardation in the United States. At least 2 million of these children and adults need ongoing services and supports. Parents, teachers, physicians, psychologists and others are often overwhelmed by the challenge of helping children and adults with mental retardation live healthy, productive, meaningful lives. The need for scientific research into the causes, prevention, and treatment of mental retardation remains as great now as it was when the Mental Retardation Research Centers program was established as part of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in 1963.

As a result of the Developmental Disabilities Research Centers program, advances have been made in our understanding of many biological and behavioral processes underlying human development and the conditions that occur when these processes go awry. Recent breakthroughs in neuro-, genomic- and behavioral sciences show that human development is an ongoing, dynamic interchange between nature and nurture. Science has identified many pieces of the mental retardation puzzle, and how some of those pieces fit together to the benefit of many. Nevertheless, continued programmatic research with a broad interdisciplinary perspective is needed to meet the goals of preventing, supporting, and remediating mental retardation and developmental disabilities.

The Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (KIDDRC) was established in 1966 as one of the original 12 Mental Retardation Research Centers administered by NICHD. Its mission then, as now, is to promote the highest quality research aimed at understanding the causes and consequences of mental retardation and developmental disabilities, and developing intervention strategies aimed at ameliorating its impact.