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Research on parents and children with autism has grown exponentially in recent years. Now, grandparents are invited to get into the act too. Since 2007, over 30,000 individuals with autism and their immediate families have submitted information about themselves to The Interactive Autism Network (IAN). Researchers then mine data from the registry to learn more about autism and to find subjects for studies.

Children in Montana are more likely than their fellow American kids to engage in physical activity daily, spend less time watching television or playing video games and are less likely to have a television in their rooms. Thirty-two percent of U.S. children ages 10 to 17 are overweight or obese, compared with 26 percent of Montana children. This information comes from the 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health, which included telephone interviews with 1,800 Montana households.

April is Autism Awareness Month, and to kick off events, the advocacy group Autism Speaks is releasing results of its first online community survey on livability. The organization used the data to generate a list of places to live for people with autism, reporting the places most often cited by respondents for best availability of services and resources, including educational offerings and recreational and medical services.

Despite recommendations that doctors routinely screen young children for developmental delays, less than half of pediatricians do so. Just 47.7 percent of pediatricians say they conduct regular developmental screenings of their patients who are under age 3, according to findings from a national survey published online in the journal Pediatrics on Monday.

oday, Hart continues to challenge status quo assumptions about the frequency of addiction and how drug use affects people. He’s even held Eric Holder to task for calling heroin use in the country “an epidemic.” Instead, Hart argues that the number of true addicts is much smaller, and when addiction does occur, it’s often because of environmental factors, rather than hardwired doom in the brain. His conclusion: Much of what we’ve been taught about drugs is wrong. With more than $40 billion being spent on anti-drug efforts a year, it’s not a message that many people want to hear. But when mass incarceration, often for misdemeanor drug possession charges, affects communities of color so deeply that health studies can’t conduct statistically sound surveys on the population not in prison, it’s a message that could disrupt the social order. We spoke to Hart about how he reached his conclusions and what it takes to speak truth to power in the scientific community.

Some novel programs are addressing a growing gap in health care: helping the millions of survivors of serious childhood diseases find treatment when they grow up. Thanks to medical advances, there are a growing number of survivors of childhood cancers as well as patients living longer with diseases like cystic fibrosis and spina bifida. More children have diseases like diabetes and asthma that will follow them into adulthood. Nearly 25% of children have at least one of a list of 18 chronic conditions, according to federal survey data.

The vast majority of American children may not be receiving recommended screenings for developmental delay, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. In a government survey, parents of 79 percent of young children reported that they had not been asked to participate in screening efforts in the previous year. This, despite recommendations that children are routinely checked at pediatrician visits for signs of developmental issues.