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Do you know someone who isn’t sure whether or not to pursue a medical diagnosis for a developmentally delayed son or daughter? According to the Centers for Disease Control, most children with autism are diagnosed after age 4.  Certain other developmental and learning disabilities are usually not diagnosed until a child enters elementary school.  These facts are puzzling, since it is well-established that early intervention leads to better outcomes for children with special needs. But there are many reasons why parents and physicians choose to delay diagnosis, even when a young child is delayed and has difficulty adapting to everyday life:

I started Hopeful Parents, a grassroots community where parents who understand what it's like having a child with special needs can connect. Consider it a pit-stop in the marathon -- where we can go for attention to our wounds, where we can re-energize our way back on track, where we can look right and look left to see others running too, where we can hear the roar of the crowds cheering us on. Hopeful Parents is a place of common ground. We'll introduce you to our diverse pool of talented, thoughtful writers who will share their stories, their feelings, their ups and their downs. You'll meet parents raising children with physical, psychological, emotional, neurological, sensory, behavioral, social, genetic, and developmental disabilities. Some parents are single, some are married. Some grieve the loss of their child; some grieve the loss of their spouse. You'll also meet healers -- the "medics" who help us through our run. People we can turn to in our pain; people who can help provide some relief.

People with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression can lose weight and keep it off through a modified lifestyle intervention program, a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-funded study reported online today in The New England Journal of Medicine. Over 80 percent of people with serious mental illnesses are overweight or obese, which contributes to them dying at three times the rate of the overall population. They succumb mostly to the same things the rest of the population experiences — cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. Although antipsychotic medications increase appetite and cause weight gain in these patients, it is not the only culprit. Like the general population, sedentary lifestyle and poor diet also play a part. Lifestyle modifications such as diet and exercise should work for these patients, yet they are often left out of weight loss studies.

Researchers at Essex University have developed a free mobile app that turns an iPhone or iPod into a hearing aid. The BioAid app is said to replicate the complexities of the human ear, unlike standard hearing aids that amplify all sounds.

The National Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum Disorders is a multi-university center to promote the use of evidence-based practice for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. The Center operates through three sites that include the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the M.I.N.D. Institute at University of California at Davis Medical School, and the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Each year, three states are selected through a competitive application process for a two-year partnership with the Professional Development Center. The Center works in coordination with each state’s Department of Education, Part C agency, and University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities to provide professional development to teachers and practitioners who serve individuals from birth through twenty-two years with autism spectrum disorders.

Unexpected discoveries in the quest to cure an extraordinary skeletal condition show how medically relevant rare diseases can be.

what’s the advantage of aerosol medicines?Many drugs that used to be administered as a high dose pill, or by IV injection, are now available as aerosols.  Inhaled medications include corticosteroids to treat patients with asthma and antibiotics to treat patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). By delivering these drugs directly to the lungs as an aerosol, we are able to bypass delivery into the systemic circulation, which allows us to give lower doses and reduce unwanted side-effects. Other drugs, such as bronchodilators and hypertonic saline, also benefit from this route of administration.

In October 2010, The Atlantic Published an article entitled, “Autism’s First Child.”  This article chronicled the first documented case of Autism in medical literature dating back to 1943.  However, this article was really more about the man, Donald Triplett, a 77-year-old Mississippian, and his enviable life.  The author of the article, Caren Zucker, explains it best when she said: We wanted readers to come away with a critical lesson — that in real and material ways, the quality of life achievable by a person with autism (or with any disability for that matter) depends significantly on how successfully and spontaneously any society recognizes the humanity of that person in its midst. In short, pity isn’t much help. But community is, when community implies connectedness, inclusiveness, caring, and, quite simply, good old-fashioned friendship. 

Welcome to the American Academy of Pediatrics' home for the latest information and resources on autism for health care professionals and families. Many new autism resources are now available and are being featured in April--Autism Awareness Month.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has issued a new Administrator Interpretation that expands the Family and Medical Leave Act’s (FMLA) current language to include adult children who are unable to care for themselves because of a mental or physical disability and whose disabilities occurred before or after the age of 18. The previous interpretation of the law was unclear as it applied to adult children with disabilities. This Interpretation also clarifies FMLA-protected leave for a parent is not dependent on the age of the adult child and the onset of their disability, and broadens the definition of “disability” to reflect the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA). Ultimately, this Interpretation means that more parents will be able to take FMLA- protected leave from their jobs to care for their adult children with disabilities.

The statistics weren’t comforting: In March 2012 the Centers for Disease Control estimated that one in 88 American children is somewhere on the autistic spectrum. We’re still not sure exactly what causes autism, and we’re not sure why the number of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) has increased since the early 1990s. According to the National Academy of Sciences, it could be because people are more aware of autism spectrum disorders today; because pediatricians are doing more screening; and because there have been changes in how autism disorders have been defined and diagnosed. In other words, more children with milder symptoms are being identified as somewhere “on the spectrum,” where they wouldn’t have been in years before. But as the Dimicks discovered—like many other parents before them—plenty of doctors claimed to have all the answers. The road parents must navigate is made more perilous by medical professionals willing to prescribe all sorts of treatments, from hyperbaric oxygen chambers and chelation therapy (which removes heavy metals with chemicals) to shelves full of dietary supplements and other alternative remedies they say can treat, even cure, autism. At best these treatments remain unapproved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; at worst they are downright dangerous. To compound the problem, a host of celebrities act as unpaid marketing reps for these unproven treatments, touting a pervasive (but incorrect) belief that autism is caused by childhood vaccines. This misinformation campaign has led, in the last few years, to a decline in the number of children receiving lifesaving inoculations. And Texas has become a center for alternative autism treatment and the anti-vaccine crusade.

When someone turns 18, they become an adult and are expected to make the right to make decisions about their medical treatment, finances and life. In order to make these decisions binding (in a legal sense), the person should be competent to understand the decision being made and the consequences of that decision.

What:The National Medicare Training Program is pleased to announce the next Understanding Medicare webinar will be held on March 6 and 7, 2012.   This webinar, which is designed for people who are new to Medicare, and for people wanting a refresher, will provide current, accurate, consistent information on Medicare, including hospital (Part A) coverage, medical (Part B) coverage, Medicare Advantage plans (Part C), and prescription drug (Part D) coverage.  The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is authorized by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) to offer 0.4 Continuing Education Units (CEU) for this program.   To receive CEU credit participants must: Complete the pre-assessment Attend all four hours of the training Complete the course registration and evaluation Complete the post-test with an aggregate score of at least 70%. When:March 6-7, 201211:00 am - 1:00 pm MTContact:Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Phone: (410) 786-5473Website: Medicare.govRegistration:Click this link to register! Please complete the registration form and select a password that is 8 characters long and contains one capital letter and a numeric digit. If you have previously attended a webinar with us please select “click here” at the top of the page. You will be redirected and asked to enter your login (your email address) and password. If you do not remember you password, please click “Forgot your password?” You will receive an e-mail confirming your registration and providing the link to the webinar pre-assessment. Space is limited, and only approved participants will receive instructions on how to register. The pre-assessment must be completed prior to the start of the webinar. You will not be able to participate in the webinar if you have not completed the pre-assessment.

About 6 million kids in America receive special education, according to the U.S. Department of Education. One out of every 10 children under the age of 14 has some type of special need, which includes any physical, cognitive, or medical disability, or chronic or life-threatening illness. My 3-year-old son Jacob is one of them.

When a child has a language delay, people tend to accept this fact at face value: Joseph is 6 but speaks like a 3-year-old. While understandably upsetting to many parents, no one expects Joseph to speak differently before he is able. There's a scramble to start services and a patient approach while allowing language to develop. The same attitude does not hold for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). ADHD is a developmental delay in a broad skill set called executive function. A huge body of research defines it as a medical disorder; neither parents nor children benefit when people suggest otherwise.

Newborn babies are screened, even if they look healthy, because some medical conditions cannot be seen by just looking at the baby. Finding these conditions soon after birth can help prevent some serious problems, such as brain damage, organ damage, and even death.

Abigail Anna Meyer is a beautiful and lively second-grader who is popular, funny and fully included in her classroom. She is sometimes confounding, sometimes difficult, but show me an 8-year-old who is not. She is not the same as her peers or her younger sisters. She has medical issues, and learns and speaks differently. But she is just as her name means in Hebrew: her father's joy.

for all the belief and investment in ABA, important questions remain about its effectiveness and how best to use it. Researchers have established that the therapy can improve behavior, language and intelligence test scores. But no scientist using the gold standards of medical research has reproduced the success rate of Lovaas, who died last year.

Pictures, photographs and other visual supports can greatly improve communication for children, adolescents and adults who struggle with understanding or using language. Today, Autism Speaks is pleased to introduce Visual Supports and Autism Spectrum Disorders, a guide for parents, teachers and medical professionals.