The Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) has removed the inclusion of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) content from its certification and continuing education coursework requirements, angering several clinicians in the space.
The BACB has become the leading organization allocating certifications for clinicians practicing applied behavior analysis (ABA), the core therapy offered in the autism therapy space. In March 2022, it announced several changes to its coursework requirements, including adding DEI content for those seeking a certification and creating a continuing education unit category for those seeking to maintain certification.
However, the BACB has joined several professional entities in backing off of DEI as a public-facing initiative after the election of President Donald Trump, whose administration has removed DEI initiatives from the federal government at several levels in one of its earliest orders. This has picked up in several aspects of the business community as well. In its March 2025 newsletter, the organization said the move was meant to protect its credentials and its standing in the wider American health care oversight complex, further maintaining that the BACB “has a responsibility to safeguard their standing.”
“The BACB has invested years of effort to ensure that its certification programs are widely recognized by funders and state licensure programs,” the newsletter reads. “Maintaining this recognition is essential to protecting the value of these credentials for certificants and the consumers they serve. However, incorporating DEI content in our upcoming requirements may jeopardize this widespread recognition.”
Jim Carr, CEO of the BACB, and several of the organization’s board members declined to respond or did not respond to requests for more information about the matter.
In the newsletter, the BACB said it convened a committee of 12 subject matter experts to assess the proposed changes to its coursework, which are set to take effect in 2027. The newsletter does not state who the subject matter experts were or their specific qualifications. The committee unanimously approved recommendations that the BACB board in turn unanimously approved.
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Coursework for those seeking certification must now include “the identification and integration of client-specific cultural, contextual, and personal variables throughout the assessment process and in the selection of goals and interventions.”
“The requirements no longer include the integration of DEI into any of the course-content areas,” the newsletter states.
The DEI category for continuing education has been removed entirely. The ethics category now includes “content on cultural and contextual responsiveness.”
“These changes balance the original SME intent and the evolving regulatory and legal landscape,” the newsletter states.
Several board-certified behavior analysts took to social media to express their frustration with the decision.
“Instead of abandoning DEI over fears of being politically targeted by a callous and reckless administration, why not dare them to stop you?” Aaron Blocher-Rubin, a BCBA and president and CEO of Arizona Autism United, said online. “Was this not a rare moment of leverage to stand tall and proud for what we believe in?”
Student BCBA Sunny Rostami reflected on her own experience in reaction to the change: “This isn’t about politics — it’s about humanity. It’s about the real harm that happens when behavior analysts are not trained to understand, respect, or support diverse families.
“I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it — as a Persian American. My community has been misunderstood, labeled, even dismissed — because some practitioners never learned cultural humility. And now, the little accountability we had? Gone.”
The nonprofit organization Black Applied Behavior Analysts (BABA) said in a statement that the coursework requirement change “sends a clear message: innovation, especially when it centers equity, will be deemed irrelevant unless it fits within a historically white, Eurocentric, and behaviorist framework. This is not scientific rigor, it is gatekeeping.”
Culturally responsive care and models that account for the specific lived experiences of various people is essential both from a clinical as well as a commercial perspective.
“One of the many benefits of having clinicians who are specifically trained to understand cultural stressors and use culturally appropriate clinical tools, is higher provider compatibility, which translates into stronger therapeutic alliance, a key determinant of treatment success,” Alice Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Anise Health, previously told Autism Business News sister publication, Behavioral Health Business.
