Congress recently voted to greenlight roughly $2 billion worth of funding that will go toward services for people with autism as well as associated research over the next five years.
Jon Meyers, director of the Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council, said understanding a simple but often repeated phrase within the community is key: If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.
“We as a nation need to make, and are making through the Autism CARES Act, an investment in ensuring that the kinds of supports [sic] necessary for people with autism are provided to them,” said Meyers.
And while the amount is staggering, he explained that spread out over the entire country and five years, it won’t be a universal fix.
“But it is going to go a long way and it's going to support research at the federal level. It's going to support research at state and local levels,” said Meyers. “And it's going to mean that academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, research entities can avail themselves of funding.”
It’s still a recognition, he added, of how important it is to invest in disability services.
“We don't have nearly enough developmental pediatricians in the state of Arizona to serve the needs — not only of the autism community, but the larger intellectual and developmental disabilities community,” said Meyers.
Arizona could also especially use the money, he said, to increase direct service access in rural areas.
“Right now, there are a lot of autism service providers in the state of Arizona. But they tend to be concentrated in metropolitan areas, so Phoenix and Tucson in particular,” said Meyers. “Developmental pediatricians are medical doctors who are specifically trained to understand the psychiatric and psychological and medical needs, physical medical needs, physical health care needs of individuals who have intellectual and developmental disabilities, who have autism.”
While there’s still a lot of work to do, Meyers said, legislation like this helps.
