2,231 Measles Cases

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

From CDC:

As of July 9, 2026, 2,231 confirmed* measles cases were reported in the United States in 2026. Among these, 2,218 measles cases were reported by 42 jurisdictions: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, New York State, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. A total of 13 measles cases were reported among international visitors to the United States.

There have been 32 new outbreaks** reported in 2026, and 93% of confirmed cases (2,082 of 2,231) are outbreak-associated (717 from outbreaks starting in 2026 and 1,365 from outbreaks that started in 2025).

In just a week or two, we are very likely to top last year's total of 2,289, for the greatest number of annual cases in 35 years.

Lena H. Sun at WP:

When South Carolina was battling an outbreak that ultimately sickened 997 people, most of them this year, the health department had lost dozens of epidemiologists, infection preventionists and other public health staff as a result of federal funding cuts, said Linda Bell, who recently retired as state epidemiologist.

“That was just very taxing for the remaining staff,” Bell said in an interview.

South Carolina scrambled to hire temporary staff, but Bell said the reinforcements couldn’t replace the expertise that had been lost and officials ultimately shifted from containment to mitigation.

The virus surged through dozens of schools in Spartanburg County, the outbreak epicenter, which long had lower childhood vaccination rates than much of the state. Students were sent into quarantine multiple times before the outbreak was declared over in April. Schools that required multiple rounds of quarantine had average vaccination rates of 77 percent, according to a recent study by Cornell University researchers.

Researchers said South Carolina’s outbreak reflected a pattern seen repeatedly in the U.S., in which faith communities with shared views on vaccination sustain and amplify transmission. Twenty-nine cases were linked to one church.

“I think that we transitioned from containment to mitigation because we saw ongoing spread for weeks and weeks,” said Bell, who retired in April.

...

Messages from elected and appointed leaders who reject evidence-based public health recommendations have undermined outbreak responses, said Bell, who did not identify officials by name. Since taking office, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has questioned vaccine safety, reshaped federal vaccine policy and criticized long-standing vaccination recommendations.

“In the past ... we were battling the diseases,” Bell said. “We were not battling this misinformation that is now coming from an entirely different stream that is within the federal government.”

 

Falling Short on IDEA Part B

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

 Kara Arundel at K-12 Dive:

• More than half of U.S. states and territories did not meet annual targets for implementing federal special education services for students with disabilities ages 3-21, according to a summary of the state determinations issued June 18 by the U.S. Department of Education.
• The latest annual state determinations for implementing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act also found that only 22 states meet the law’s implementation requirements and improvement efforts for early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities and developmental delays.
• As schools experience both an uptick in the number of students with disabilities qualifying for special education services and a special educator shortage, the IDEA state and district accountability system play an important role in ensuring schools are meeting students’ needs.

From the departmental summary:

MEETS REQUIREMENTS Alabama Massachusetts Rhode Island Connecticut Missouri Republic of Marshall Islands Florida Nebraska South Dakota Illinois New Hampshire Texas Indiana New Jersey Virginia Kansas Ohio Wisconsin Kentucky Pennsylvania Wyoming 

NEEDS ASSISTANCE (one year) Maryland Minnesota North Dakota 

NEEDS ASSISTANCE (two or more consecutive years) Alaska Georgia Oklahoma American Samoa Guam Oregon Arkansas Hawaii Republic of Palau Arizona Idaho Puerto Rico California Iowa South Carolina Colorado Louisiana Tennessee Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Michigan Utah Mississippi Virgin Islands Delaware Montana Washington Federated States of Micronesia Nevada West Virginia North Carolina

NEEDS INTERVENTION Bureau of Indian Education New Mexico New York District of Columbia Vermont Maine

Autism Journalism

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss coverage of autism in the mass media.

Kristen Hwang at the Association of Health Care Journalists:

In the face of government-sanctioned misinformation campaigns about autism, journalists must do more to include autistic voices in stories and recognize the nuance in each person’s disability experience, panelists at Health Journalism 2026 said.

Autism and other forms of neurodiversity are normal variations in brain function and should not be framed as a condition that needs to be “cured,” Milena Bates, speaker and co-founder of the Minnesota Autistic Alliance, said during the session.

“Neurodiversity is just a fact, same as diversity in general,” Bates said.

That means a universal autistic experience doesn’t exist and that reporters should seek out a variety of perspectives for their stories. People require varying levels of interventions and support, and a therapy that is helpful for one person may be harmful for another. Without neurodiverse voices, stories about the community are often “wrong about a lot of things,” Bates said.

Speaking with autistic people is particularly important, argued Bates and Julia Métraux, disability reporter for Mother Jones, at a time when Trump administration officials have pushed a narrative that erases the dignity of people with disabilities.

In 2025, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared the country would “eliminate” the “autism epidemic” within five months. Kennedy has supported policies casting doubt on vaccine safety and insisted, despite decades of evidence to the contrary, that vaccines cause autism.

The over-medicalization of autism, the implication that it is a disease that can spread, and the suggestion that autistic people need to change is harmful, disability advocates say.

Opposition to Moving Special Ed Out of the Education Dept

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of turning it into a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it.   More recently, they have shifted  OSERS to HHS and OCR to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, headed by a political hack who uses the r-word as a slur.

Mackenzie Wilkes at POLITICO:

“I anticipate that it will become increasingly difficult for states to get both the support and the oversight that is needed,” said Stephanie Smith Lee, former director of the Office of Special Education Programs under President George W. Bush.

...

But transferring special education could get a harsh rebuke this month from lawmakers on Capitol Hill who oversee IDEA and both the education and health agencies. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, promised committee member Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) in an unrelated markup after the agreements were struck, that the panel would vote on the issue.

The promise from Cassidy, who lost his bid for reelection in May after Trump endorsed a primary challenger, came after Kaine proposed an amendment to prohibit the transfer of the special education and rehabilitative services office. The Virginia Democrat withdrew the amendment after Cassidy committed to Kaine’s ask for the panel to vote on bipartisan legislation or the amendment.

“I will publicly commit to working with him for the next markup in July at finding something which is an accommodation for everyone’s concerns,” Cassidy, who doesn’t support special education being moved to HHS, said at the June 17 HELP Committee meeting. The Louisiana Republican also said he’d prefer that the Labor Department oversee the program if an agreement is struck.

Lee’s organization, along with hundreds of disability, education and civil rights groups have pressed Congress to block the transfer of special education to HHS and the Education Department’s civil rights enforcement to the Justice Department.

“State education leaders and educators⸺including both general and special educators⸺also rely on ED’s expertise, guidance, monitoring, and technical assistance; responsibilities that Congress unilaterally funds and directs the Department to provide,” the groups wrote in an open letter to lawmakers urging Congress to “reject these transfers and preserve the Department of Education’s longstanding and Congressionally mandated roles.”

Antivaxxer Faces Murder Charges

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

Liam Quinn at People:

An Idaho mother was charged with the murders of her 18-month-old twins more than a year after suggesting their deaths were the result of vaccinations.

Andrea Shaw was indicted on two counts of first-degree murder on Monday, June 29, the Payette Police Department said in a press release.

Previously, Payette police said the 18-month-old twins were found dead in a shared bed on May 1, 2025. Authorities did not reveal a cause of death.

Days after the two children, a boy and a girl, were found dead, Shaw and her husband appeared on a podcast produced by Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization formerly led by current U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

On the podcast, Shaw suggested that the twins got sick and died shortly after they received three vaccinations.\

...

Multiple large-scale studies have found that vaccines are safe. There is no scientific link between vaccines and autism, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Katie Francis at The Daily Beast:

Children’s Health Defense was formerly led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and teamed with Shaw in a lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics for “defrauding” families about the safety of vaccines.

In the lawsuit, it claims that the young boy and girl died “eight days after receiving their 18-month vaccines.”

It continues: “On April 23, 2025, both twins were administered hepatitis A, influenza, and DTaP vaccines at their pediatrician’s office in Payette, Idaho. Prior to vaccination, Mrs. Shaw and her mother-in-law warned the pediatrician about a family history of adverse reactions to the flu vaccine on the father’s side.

...

Despite Shaw’s strong anti-vaccine statements in connection with her childrens’ deaths, KDTV has stated that the indictment against her alleges suffocation.

Prevention of Drowning

The Politics of Autism discusses the dangers facing autistic people, including wandering and drowning.

From the Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate:

Ahead of the 4th of July weekend, the Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) and the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services (DDS) are expanding their Autism, Wandering & Water Safety awareness campaign focused on drowning prevention and emergency preparation for children with autism. The safety campaign includes a dedicated webpage mass.gov/AutismWaterSafety, with tools and strategies to help prevent these deaths.

The campaign includes videos in English and Spanish featuring a local mother whose child is autistic and has in the past wandered away, with information about tools to help caregivers keep their children safe.

 Jonaki Mehta and Janet W. Lee at NPR:

Kids with autism are 160 times more likely than other children to die from drowning, according to a seminal 2017 study from Columbia University. In fact, in Florida, most children drown in backyard pools. That's largely because about half of autistic children have a tendency to wander from safe settings. That fact, combined with an attraction to water can make for a dangerous combination. Quality swim lessons can help.

That's one of the reasons Mackenzie's parents enrolled her in Swim Buddies, the YMCA of South Florida's low-cost program aimed at children with disabilities. It's also why the state of Florida, which has one of the highest childhood drowning rates in the nation, is expanding a voucher program on July 1 that will put children ages 1-7 who have autism at the front of the line for subsidized swim lessons. "We have tragic circumstances and stories across the state of Florida of young children with autism that are wandering away, they're eloping from their homes, from their classrooms," says Florida state Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat, and one of the lawmakers who sponsored the bipartisan bill that changed the state's swim vouchers.

2,170 Measles Cases

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

From CDC:

As of July 2, 2026, 2,170 confirmed* measles cases were reported in the United States in 2026. Among these, 2,158 measles cases were reported by 41 jurisdictions: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, New York State, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. A total of 12 measles cases were reported among international visitors to the United States.

There have been 31 new outbreaks** reported in 2026, and 93% of confirmed cases (2,019 of 2,170) are outbreak-associated (659 from outbreaks starting in 2026 and 1,360 from outbreaks that started in 2025).

For the full year of 2025, a total of 2,289 confirmed* measles cases were reported in the United States.

Alllie Yang at NY Post:

Measles only needs a small opening — and it got one.

For the second year in a row, cases of measles — known as the world’s most infectious disease — will hit record highs, and 2026 is on track to be substantially worse than 2025.

In a matter of weeks, we’re likely to blow past last year’s total, hitting the highest number of cases in 35 years.

“This is a major public health warning sign,” epidemiologist Dr. Syra Madad told The Post. “The US is already close to last year’s total with about half the year still ahead.”

...

“Unless we interrupt transmission quickly, 2026 is likely to surpass 2025 and could do so substantially,” Madad warned.

“We should be cautious about making exact projections because outbreaks can slow when vaccination campaigns, isolation, contact tracing and community engagement are effective. But the current pattern is deeply concerning.

Trump and Institutions

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss court cases involving the civil rights of people with autism and other disabilities. 

For decades, people with autism and other developmental disabilities languished in large institutions, many of which were snake pits.  

Annie Ma at AP:

Last month, the Education Department announced it would offload oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose comments on the limits of disabilities such as autism have drawn sharp rebukes from advocates and lawmakers.

Meanwhile, following a White House push to police homelessness, the Department of Justice released guidance that lowered the barrier to institutionalizing any person with a disability.

Taken together, the actions signal a worrying return to a reality where people with disabilities are pushed to the margins of society, advocates said.

Trump has long called for bringing back the mental institutions.

February 22, 2018:

So we're going to be talking seriously about opening mental health institutions again, in some cases, reopening. I can tell you, in New York, the Governors in New York did a very, very bad thing when they closed our mental institutions, so many of them. You have these people living on the streets. And I can say that, in many cases throughout the country, they're very dangerous. They shouldn't be there. So we're going to be talking about mental institutions. And when you have some person like this, you can bring them into a mental institution, and they can see what they can do. But we've got to get them out of our communities.

February 26, 2018:

But, in the old days, you would put him into a mental institution. And we had them in New York, and our government started closing them because of cost. And we're going to have to start talking about mental institutions, because a lot of the folks in this room closed their mental institutions also.

 August 14, 2019:

And we're looking at mental institutions, which we used to have. Like, as an example, where I come from in New York, they closed up almost all of their mental institutions—or many of them—and those people just went onto the streets. And they did it for budgetary reasons. Well, New York is not unique; they've done that in many places.

January 20, 2026:

Signed an Executive order to bring back mental institutions and insane asylums. We're going to have to bring them back. Hate to build those suckers, but you've got to get the people off the streets.

You know, we used to have—when I was growing up, we had, in my area in Queens—I grew up in Queens. We had a place called Creedmoor. Creedmoor. Did anybody know that? Creedmoor. It was a big—I said, "Mom, why are those bars on the building?"

I used to play Little League Baseball there, at a place called Cunningham Park. I was quite the baseball player. You wouldn't believe it. But I said to my mother, "Mom"—she would be there. Always there for me. She said, "Son, you could be a professional baseball player." I said, "Thanks, Mom."

I said, "Why are those bars on the windows?" Big building. Big, powerful building. It loomed over the park, actually. It was pretty—she said, "Well, people that are very sick are in that building." I said, "Boy." I used to always look at that building, and I'd see this big building—big, tall building. It loomed over the park. It was sort of—now that I think, it was a pretty unfriendly sight.

But I'll never forget. I don't know if it's still there, because they got rid of most of them. You know, they—the Democrats in New York, they took them down, and the people live on the streets now. That's why you have a lot of the people in California and other places, they live on the streets. They took the mental institutions down. They're expensive.

But I'd say: "Why does that building have those bars? Boy." It didn't—it wasn't normal. You know, you're used to looking at, like, a window. But this, when you look at it, all the steel—vicious steel, tiny windows, bars all over the place. Nobody was getting out. It's called a mental institution. That was an insane asylum.

 

Vaccine Myths and the Malleable Middle

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

Alex Montero et al. at KFF: 

With childhood vaccination rates in the U.S. continuing to decline as measles cases rise across the U.S., KFF’s latest Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust shows that several commonly circulated vaccine myths remain pervasive among the public. Many adults say they have heard false claims about the measles and COVID-19 vaccines, including that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines have been proven to cause autism in children (66%), that more people have died from the COVID-19 vaccines than the virus (46%), that mRNA vaccines can alter DNA (36%), or that measles vaccines are more dangerous than measles itself (29%).

...

When looking at patterns of belief across the four false vaccine claims, a new analysis shows that some adults are consistent or leaned myth believers (8% who say all four claims are either “probably” or “definitely true”), or myth deniers (55% who deny all four claims, saying they are either “probably” or “definitely false”). At the same time, about three in ten (31%) fall in a “mixed middle” group, providing a range of true and false answers across the four vaccine myths and lacking certainty on at least half of the false claims. This group may be an important focus for those looking to counter vaccine misinformation and dispel confusion. Black adults, Hispanic adults, Republicans, younger adults, and those without a college degree are all more likely than their counterparts to fall into this “mixed middle” group, as are individuals who go to social media or AI for health information. Notably, nearly half of parents who report skipping or delaying recommended vaccines for their children fall in the “mixed middle,” indicating that these parents’ decisions may be driven, at least in part, by uncertainty and confusion.

HHS, DOJ, and IDEA

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of turning it into a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it.   More recently, they have shifted  OSERS to HHS and OCR to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, headed by a political hack who uses the r-word as a slur.

Jerell Hill, dean of student services at Los Angeles City College, at Education Week:

On June 16, the U.S. Department of Education announced agreements moving special education oversight to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and shifting civil rights enforcement to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Education Department officials moved quickly to reassure families: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act still stands. Individualized education programs will continue. The right to a free, appropriate public education remains intact.

I spent years as a regional director of special education. I know what oversight actually does and I know why “nothing will change” is the wrong thing to celebrate.

Oversight is the bridge between a right written on paper and a child’s ordinary Tuesday. The monitoring visits, the annual performance determinations, the technical assistance, the accountability no parent ever sees: That machinery is how a federal guarantee first enshrined in 1975 becomes an education for a real student today. When it works, a family never has to think about it. When it fails, a child loses a year they do not get back.

So, the question is not whether the law survives this reorganization. The question is what happens to the meaning underneath the law when the file moves between federal agencies and the complaint routes through a courtroom.

Here is my worry, and it is not a partisan one. Housing special education inside HHS invites a subtle reframing. It nudges us toward seeing a child as a diagnosis to manage rather than a learner whose potential the system exists to develop. Special education was won as an educational right. We can’t allow it to be redefined as a medical service.

Bianca Quilantan at POLITICO:

“The DOJ Civil Rights Division’s [Educational Opportunities] Section has lost most of its attorneys under this administration because the department made it clear that it was not interested in doing the traditional work the section had done combating discrimination in education,” said Stacey Young, a former DOJ Civil Division senior attorney who leads Justice Connection, a group of former department employees advocating against the Trump administration’s changes to the agency.

...

Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, has said her agency will no longer be just the endpoint for the process.

“We’re taking it all in-house for the Department of Education, and doing that work for them, from soup to nuts,” she told “The Glenn Beck Program.”“Of course, they have the ultimate authority at the end of the day by statute, but 99 percent of the work is going to be done here.”

But advocates have expressed concerns that the DOJ has typically been very selective about what cases it takes up and that many complaints could fall through the cracks.

“OCR receives thousands of complaints of discrimination a year and they have the resources to better handle that volume of incoming complaints,” Young said. “DOJ just doesn’t have the same capacity. They don’t have enough lawyers and investigators, and that’s not what the lawyers and investigators they do have are trained to do.”

 

How Many Autistic College Students?

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the growing number of college students on the spectrum.  

Cox BE, Stockwell KM, Kepple CR, Francis CB. The Prevalence of Autistic College Students in the United States. Autism in Adulthood. 2026;0(0). doi:10.1177/25739581251405705

Abstract

How many autistic college students are in the United States? Research to date has not specifically addressed this seemingly straightforward question. Yet, an answer may be critical to the advancement of research, policy, and practice related to autistic students in higher education. This article addresses three related but distinct questions about autistic students’ college enrollment within the United States: (1) What percentage of autistic high school students go on to college? (2) What percentage of students registered with their postsecondary institutions’ Disability Services Offices are autistic? and (3) What percentage of enrolled undergraduates are autistic? To answer these questions, we examined 731 publications, reviewed 16 common survey instruments used at postsecondary institutions, and inspected codebooks from 6 federal datasets. Rather than employing traditional systematic review techniques, we used an iterative, consensus-driven assessment process to ultimately synthesize relevant data from 14 prior publications and 3 original author-generated statistical summaries drawn from a total of 13 distinct sources of underlying data. We conclude that the best available evidence suggests 42.9%–47.0% of autistic high school students continue on to college, 2.8%–4.0% of college students registered with their schools’ Disability Service Offices are autistic, and 0.3%–4.7% of all undergraduates are autistic. Ultimately, our calculations suggest that there are likely between 135,400 and 286,254 autistic undergraduates currently attending college in the United States. These estimates can be used by researchers, policymakers, and educators to highlight the importance of attending to the interests, needs, experiences, and outcomes for autistic students.

Undiagnosed and Older

In The Politics of Autism, I write about the everyday struggles facing autistic people and their families.

Rhiannon Evans at The Guardian:

There has been a huge shift in awareness around neurodiversity recently, with improved provision for children in schools and increased middle-age diagnosis and detection in women. Still, one group has remained underserved when it comes to support; adults over 60. A recent study estimated that 89-97% of autistic people over 60 are undiagnosed, leading experts in the field, such as Dr Louise Rutter (who last year co-authored a report on the subject for the British Psychological Society) to brand them a “neglected generation”.

The figures are for the UK, but it is likely that the American figures are similar.

First posted here in September: 

Gavin R. Stewart1 and Francesca Happé, "Aging Across the Autism Spectrum," Annual Review of Developmental Psychology  Vol. 7:461-484 (Volume publication date December 2025) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-111323-090813.

Abstract:

Aging in autistic populations is a historically neglected but now rapidly advancing area of research. This narrative review provides a broad overview of the current state of the field of aging on the autism spectrum by synthesizing and critically appraising findings from across a range of research priorities identified by autistic people and other stakeholder groups. These include (a) the trajectory of core autistic features; (b) health profiles, biological aging, and mortality; (c) influential life experiences and life outcomes (including transition periods such as retirement and menopause and events such as trauma and periods of crisis); (d) cognitive function, aging, and dementia; and (e) quality of life and social support. Where possible, empirical research focusing on diagnosed autistic people is presented, but due to very high rates of underdiagnosis of autism in this demographic, trait-based research is also considered. Research specifically focusing on midlife (i.e., 40–64 years) and older age (i.e., 65 years and older) is presented where available, but due to a dearth of such research, lifespan studies (i.e., samples including middle-aged and older people, but not differentiating them) are also discussed. This review concludes by identifying future research priorities, as well as key conceptual issues that researchers interested in the intersection of aging and autism should consider for this emerging and rapidly advancing area of research.

TRICARE and ABA

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the day-to-day challenges facing autistic people and their families.  As many posts have discussed, the challenges are especially great for military families.

 Berkeley Lovelace Jr., Jason Kane and Erin McLaughlin at NBC:

ABA helps children with autism to develop important life skills, said Alycia Halladay, chief science officer at the Autism Science Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group.

“It’s all about breaking things down into smaller steps, and then also providing the appropriate reinforcement for things,” Halladay said.

“This is how we all learn, by the way,” she added. “We all learn to go to the potty by somebody reinforcing us by going to the bathroom on the potty. We learned to be on time by people reinforcing us and giving us positive accolades for being on time. Kids with autism, they get it more intensely and they get it more directed based on the skill they need help with.”

Most states have mandates requiring private insurers to cover ABA or other behavioral interventions for children with autism, Halladay said.

Those mandates, however, don’t apply to the federal government, including federal programs such as TRICARE, she said. (Some federal programs do cover the therapy for children, including Medicaid and the Federal Employees Health Benefit, the government’s health insurance program for federal employees, retirees and their families.)

In 2021, Kristi Cabiao started a nonprofit called Mission Alpha aimed at pressuring both TRICARE and members of Congress to restore broad coverage of ABA. She lobbied Congress for an independent study reviewing the effectiveness of the therapy, which was launched that same year and conducted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Last September, the group published a 336-page report affirming that ABA should be included as a basic benefit under TRICARE, without the excessive administrative barriers that have disrupted treatment for children in military families.

The report stated the evidence to support ABA therapy “is robust” and meets “the Department of Defense’s own criteria of reliable evidence.”