Provisions
The Act provides money for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to conduct epidemiological surveillance programs and would re-authorize the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) to coordinate all efforts within the Department of Health and Human Services concerning autism, including activities carried out through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the CDC.
The Combating Autism Act allocates approximately $950 million in spending on autism over five years, approximately doubling expenditures on existing programs; this includes a significant increase in spending for biomedical research in autism.
The Act requires the director of NIH to develop and implement a strategic plan for autism research and a budget to fund this plan. The plan and budget would have to take into account recommendations of a public/private committee, the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, which itself would have to include at least one-third public members, a person with autism, and a person who is the parent of a child with autism. The act provides grant programs for states to develop autism screening, early diagnosis, and intervention programs for children.
The act also authorizes:
- The Director of the NIH to create an “Autism Czar”, who would coordinate NIH based-research and oversee development and budgeting of autism research and would increase the number of Centers of Excellence on Autism from eight to ten.
- An information and education program and its risk factors to be provided by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to health professionals and the general public.
- Commitment of $75 million a year by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), for each of the next five years, for grants for states to develop autism screening, diagnosis, and intervention programs, and to create statewide screening systems to ensure all children are screened for autism by the age of two.
- $25 million a year, for five years, for technical assistance and data management to states for autism screening, diagnosis and intervention programs.
The Act reauthorizes, for five years, the $12 million annual funding for the epidemiological surveillance program for autism, overseen by the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC).
Read more about this topic: Combating Autism Act
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—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Drinking tents were full, glasses began to clink in carriages, hampers to be unpacked, tempting provisions to be set forth, knives and forks to rattle, champagne corks to fly, eyes to brighten that were not dull before, and pickpockets to count their gains during the last heat. The attention so recently strained on one object of interest, was now divided among a hundred; and, look where you would, there was a motley assemblage of feasting, talking, begging, gambling and mummery.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)