Co-founder & CEO
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 1 in 6 newborn children will be diagnosed with a developmental disability (such as autism), making such conditions more common than pediatric cancer, diabetes, and AIDS combined. Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is the main treatment methodology recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the US Surgeon General, and the US National Institutes of Mental Health for treating individuals with developmental disabilities such as autism. However, the highly limited availability of credentialed ABA providers – only approximately 30,000 Board Certified Behavior Therapists worldwide – severely limits its potential benefit for the hundreds of millions of individuals globally with such disorders. Limited public support services, including in the education and healthcare systems, further amplify this challenge.
Rethink was founded with a mission to address the significant challenge of how to effectively and affordably meet the treatment needs of this enormous and growing population worldwide with a significant shortage of trained professionals. The Company determined that the only way to deliver clinical best practice treatment in a scalable way was to leverage technology to train whoever cared for the individual with the developmental disability to deliver the treatment. This would impact all the entities revolving around this population’s care, including the school, the home, and the healthcare system. Rethink found extensive research on the effectiveness of video modeling for training in fields such as medicine and the military and decided to combine this proven method of instruction with the proven and medically-recommended ABA treatment methodology, creating an online training and support system for individuals with a developmental disability and their caregivers worldwide.
Daniel Etra’s mission has been and will continue to be guaranteeing that every child on the autism spectrum, as well as those with other developmental disabilities, has admittance to clinical best practice treatment, no matter where they are located. Hence, Daniel Etra Co-founded Rethink and currently serves as its CEO. Daniel has over two decades of international business experience, including 15 years as a serial entrepreneur.
As per Daniel, roughly 450 million individuals with a developmental disability globally, hence there is a tremendous need for Rethink. The company looks forward to continuing to expand as the premier program supporting this growing population and their caregivers, no matter where they are located around the world. Rethink is also broadening its services to help individuals with developmental disabilities as they enter adulthood, including initiatives aimed at helping them find employment and assisting them in the workplace.
For Daniel, the desire is not just to build a successful business but one that will inspire and empower the lives of individuals with developmental disabilities by incorporating technology in a scalable solution. Hence, Daniel Etra established Rethink—a global health technology company providing cloud-based treatment tools, training and clinical supports for individuals with developmental disabilities and their caregivers. Rethink set out to create a scalable solution that would make clinical best practice treatment tools and supports available to the individual and their caregiver(s) no matter where they are located.
Beginning with a focus on families caring for a dependent with a developmental disability, Rethink, under Etra’s leadership, has expanded its product range to serve all entities revolving around the care of this population. Today, Rethink’s three divisions – Education, Employer and Behavioral Health are offering treatment tools and supports for caregivers in the US Department of Defense, Managed Care, Medicaid, federal, state and social service agencies, public school districts, Fortune 500 employers and families in the U.S. and over 120 countries globally. It is pertinent to mention that the Rethink platform connects through data a network of stakeholders across a continuum of care and provides deep content and analytical tools within each vertical.
Establishing Rethink
Established in 2006, The Vida Bogart School for All Children, known as 352X, is a K-8 school that serves the needs of students with autism, emotional disturbances, and intellectual disabilities. The school’s mission is to “create an academic setting where all students can learn” and to help students “become lifelong learners through a variety of teaching styles and expertise.” The school started with Rethink Ed mid-year, piloting it with a small group of teachers who, as Lourdes says, “fell in love with it.”
That’s because Rethink Ed helped the teachers personalize their 1:1 instruction, showing them how to match learning objectives and activities with the goals of the student’s IEP. For 352X, Rethink Ed rose head and shoulders above other programs for one simple reason: the students. Thanks to data-driven strategies, progress monitoring tools, an online professional development library, an IEP instructional model, and an extensive academic catalogue, Rethink Ed is helping 352X refine, deepen, and expand its pedagogy to ensure professional development for staff, learning opportunities for parents, and college and career readiness for special education students.
Since implementation in 2013, 352X has gone from piloting Rethink Ed as a means of addressing ADL skills, to using it to match learning objectives with IEPs, to aligning the entire school’s units of study with academic skills and Common Core Learning Standards. Most recently, 352X began using Rethink Ed for students who sit for the state English Language Arts and mathematics exams.
Rethink Ed was founded on a simple, yet powerful idea: To literally re-think education. To make it better and easier. To unburden school districts and empower educators. To improve outcomes and elevate accountability. To promote collaboration and inspire learning.
And, most importantly, to make a difference in the school day for everyone – administrators, educators, and students.
As a division of Rethink First, an award-winning technology developer of cloud-based tools, training, and supports, Rethink Ed is pioneering EdTech. It is relentless in pursuing innovative ways to put evidence-based, data-informed, digitally delivered instruction and assessments into the hands of educators, clinicians, and parents who share our single-minded focus: To help all children succeed. Rethink Ed is part of Rethink offering clinical best practice treatment tools, training and supports for individuals with developmental disabilities (such as autism) and their caregivers. Rethink’s award-winning online program is used by Fortune 500 companies, government agencies such as the US Department of Defense, public school districts, behavioral health providers, managed care organizations and families worldwide.
An Industry-Leading Platform
Through its three sections, each with distinct versions of its online program, Rethink is the preeminent software platform serving the basic key market segments that offer care to people with developmental disabilities:
Education – Rethink extends the leading special needs management platform for public school communities. Serving all pupils with special needs as well as those who need behavioral support, the Rethink program is used in all 50 states by hundreds of districts extending from large urban systems like San Francisco, New York City, Dallas, and Denver to small, rural areas. The Rethink program empowers communities to fully meet Federal IDEA conditions as well as a variety of state-based legislative mandates to provide sufficient education to students with special needs.
Employee Benefits – Rethink gives the industry-leading training and support platform for employees heeding for dependents with a developmental disability. Its clients rank from small employers to those with over 500,000 employees. Research has shown precisely the adverse influence of caring for a dependent with a developmental disability – from over twice the rates of stress and depression to thousands of dollars annually in lost productivity. Indeed, above half of caregivers work fewer hours or leave the workforce to support the needs of their child. The Rethink program helps encourage these employees, directly impacting their productivity in the workplace, and encourages employers build a culture of wellness for their complete workforce.
Behavioral Health – Rethink extends the industry-leading practice management platform for behavioral health service providers concentrating in individuals with autism and related disorders. The software helps enhance treatment outcomes by simplifying and automating workflows, developing staff training, and ensuring standardization and delivery of clinical accuracy of care.
Rethink also offers a range of technology-enabled remote service options, ranging from short-term web-based consultations with Rethink’s Board-certified behavior therapists to ongoing program development initiatives supported by an in-house team of clinicians. The Company’s practice management offering allows for the tracking of service authorizations and cost of treatment as it relates to clinical outcomes. Rethink serves individuals at all levels of development and ages ranging from point of diagnosis through early adulthood.
One of Rethink’s corporate clients, Costco Wholesale, incorporated the Rethink program into their benefits system for their employees. Donna Sexton, the Director of Employee Benefits at Costco, stated, “I can’t think of any benefits we’ve ever added to our suite that got so much attention and so many letters to our president, thanking him for bringing Rethink on, and what a difference it was going to make in their lives.”
Rethink found extensive research on the effectiveness of video modelling for training in fields such as medicine and the military and decided to combine this proven method of instruction with the proven and medically-recommended ABA treatment methodology, creating an online training and support system for its clients. Moreover, the company is working towards expanding their core product offering beyond treatment tools and supports for dependents with a developmental disability and their caregivers to adults with a developmental disability, including supporting those individuals with a Neurodiverse condition in the workplace.
“Rethink set out to create a scalable solution that would make clinical best practice treatment tools and supports available to the individual and their caregiver(s) no matter where they are located”
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