John Constantino, MD

John N. Constantino M.D. is the inaugural Chief of Behavioral and Mental Health at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the Emory University School of Medicine.  Prior to moving to Atlanta in 2022, Dr. Constantino served as Blanche F. Ittleson Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at Washington University in St. Louis, where he directed a research program in childhood social development that was continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health for 25 years.

In the early 2000s, he and his team developed and advanced methods for measuring autistic symptoms as quantitative traits, allowing patterns of transmission of inherited liability to be traced in families and populations. A signature rating scale developed in his laboratory, the Social Responsiveness Scale, has been translated into over 60 languages and is used in over 2 million test administrations per year in research and clinical settings. The findings from use of the scale in genetic epidemiologic research revolutionized understanding of the symptom structure of autism and led to the identification of a discrete set of inherited developmental liabilities that constitute new, tractable targets for higher-impact early intervention.

In his new role, Dr. Constantino has set his sights on a discovery agenda to model the impact of systematic implementation of decades of advances in clinical psychiatry, psychology, and the social sciences, to inform transformation of child mental health practice in the U.S.

Disclosures:

John Constantino receives royalties for the commercial distribution of the Social Responsiveness Scale-2, a quantitative measure of autistic traits, a salary from Emory University/CHOA, and a speaking fee from the FSU Autism Institute. He has no relevant nonfinancial relationships to disclose.