Screening for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is an essential early step in the identification process and inaccurate screening may lead to significant delays in the onset of treatment. Past research has highlighted discrepancies in the performance of ASD screening tools such as the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) among certain racial and…

This paper examines age of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) identification and related factors in a diverse urban sample, focusing on ASD identification in the East African Somali community. The overall average age of initial ASD identification was 4.8 years. Somali children received an initial clinical diagnosis of Autistic Disorder later than…

The Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, Revised, with Follow-Up (M-CHAT-R/F) is the most widely used screener for ASD. Despite the comparable rate of ASD in Black and White children, the M-CHAT-R/F was validated on a primarily White, Non-Hispanic sample. Few studies have assessed whether the screener performs adequately with racial…

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; 62.9% boys, 73.3% children of color, 34.9%…

This study examined how county-level resources are associated with the identification of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in Medicaid. Medicaid claims from 2004 were combined with county-level data. There were 61,891 children diagnosed with ASD in the Medicaid system in 2004. Counties with lower per-student education expenditures,…