Effectiveness of Screening in Early Intervention Settings to Improve Diagnosis of Autism and Reduce Health Disparities.

Importance: The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends referring children at elevated risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) for Part C early intervention (EI) services, but notes that EI services often fail to provide ASD screening.

Objective: To evaluate the hypothesis that a multistage screening protocol for ASD implemented in 3 EI settings will increase autism detection, especially among Spanish-speaking families.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Difference-in-differences analyses with propensity score weighting of a quasi-experimental design using administrative data on 3 implementation EI agencies and 9 comparison EI agencies from 2012 to 2018 provided by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

Biases, Barriers, and Possible Solutions: Steps Towards Addressing Autism Researchers Under-Engagement with Racially, Ethnically, and Socioeconomically Diverse Communities.

Autistic individuals who are also people of color or from lower socioeconomic strata are historically underrepresented in research. Lack of representation in autism research has contributed to health and healthcare disparities. Reducing these disparities will require culturally competent research that is relevant to under-resourced communities as well as collecting large nationally representative samples, or samples in which traditionally disenfranchised groups are over-represented.

Alliance-Outcome Associations in a Community-Based Social Skills Intervention for Youth With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Although the alliance is a consistent predictor of treatment outcomes in psychosocial interventions, few studies have examined this association among youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In particular, youth-therapist alliance has never been examined in social skills interventions (SSIs), a common modality for this population. In this study, thirty-four youth with ASD (M = 12.

A Systematic Review of Organizational and Workforce Interventions to Improve the Culture and Climate of Youth-Service Settings.

Both organizational culture and climate are associated with service quality and outcomes across youth-service settings. Increasing evidence indicates capacity of organizational interventions to promote a positive and effective culture and climate. Less is known about common intervention components across studies and service settings.

Multi-stage Screening in Early Intervention: A Critical Strategy for Improving ASD Identification and Addressing Disparities.

Health disparities in ASD detection affect children's access to subsequent interventions. We examined potential disparities in implementation of a multi-stage ASD screening and diagnostic evaluation protocol in Part C Early Intervention with 4943 children ages 14-36 months (mean 22.0 months; 62.

What Drives Detection and Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder? Looking Under the Hood of a Multi-stage Screening Process in Early Intervention.

U.S. guidelines for detecting autism emphasize screening and also incorporate clinical judgment.

Unimpaired attentional disengagement in toddlers with autism spectrum disorder.

A prominent hypothesis holds that 'sticky' attention early in life in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) limits their ability to explore and learn about the world. Under this hypothesis, the core clinical symptoms of ASD - restricted interests, repetitive behaviors and impaired social/communication abilities - could all result from impaired attentional disengagement during development. However, the existence of disengagement deficits in children with ASD is controversial, and a recent study found no deficit in 5- to 12-year-olds with ASD.

Stability and individual change in depressive symptoms among mothers raising young children with ASD: maternal and child correlates.

Mothers raising children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) evidence elevated depressive symptoms, but symptom stability has not been examined. Mothers (N=143) of toddlers with ASD (77% boys) were enrolled and assessed when their children were 18 to 33 months old and followed annually for 2 years. Multilevel modeling revealed no significant change in group depressive symptom level, which was in the moderately elevated range (Intercept=13.

Autism spectrum disorders in young children.

Retrospective research studies, videotape analyses of children later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and recent studies on younger siblings of children diagnosed with ASD, at high-risk of ASD, provide evidence of the early signs of ASD in children as young as 12 months. This article provides a review of early identification, diagnostic assessment, and treatment for young children (0-5 years old) with ASD. Several screening tools as well as comprehensive assessment measures are described.