Autism Spin Versus Autism Trends—Rising Prevalence in Black and Hispanic Children
By the Children’s Health Defense Team
When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its biannual overview of autism prevalence in early 2018, it reported that one in fifty-nine 8-year-olds (born in 2006) had an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This represented a 15% increase from the CDC’s 2016 and 2014 reports.
Despite the two-year jump in ASD prevalence, the CDC cast a positive spin on its 2018 findings. Recognizing that white ASD prevalence had been higher, in the past, than prevalence among other race/ethnicity groups, the agency hypothesized that white ASD prevalence had largely stabilized and praised the 15% increased prevalence as a reflection of “the catch-up of Hispanics and blacks who had been historically underascertained." The media readily acquiesced to this worn-out narrative, implying that latent autism cases had simply been waiting to be discovered through more effective outreach and better screening.
Dissatisfied with the “better diagnosis” explanation, University of Colorado researcher Cynthia Nevison and Rutgers researcher Walter Zahorodny have published a new study critiquing the “catch-up” hypothesis. Their analysis further undermines officials’ complacent narrative by highlighting upward ASD trends among black and Hispanic children above and beyond mere “catch-up”—as well as pointing to worsening racial/ethnic disparities.
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