Autism Awareness

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released its biennial update of autism’s estimated prevalence among the nation’s children, based on an analysis of 2014 medical records and, where available, educational records of 8-year-old children from 11 monitoring sites across the United States.

The new estimate represents a 15 percent increase in prevalence nationally: to 1 in 59 children, from 1 in 68 two years previous. 

However, prevalence estimates varied widely between monitoring sites, with significantly higher numbers at sites where researchers had full access to school records. This suggests that the new national numbers reflect a persistent undercount of autism’s true prevalence among the nation’s children.