Indiana University School of Medicine Wins $7 Million NIH Grant to Train Nearly 200 Primary Care Clinicians to Diagnose Autism Closer to Home
The Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, Marion County, Indiana, has announced a five-year, $7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to train primary care clinicians to diagnose autism, in what will be the largest study to date on training primary care clinicians to make the diagnosis.
Autism prevalence has increased by 400 percent over the past two decades, but there is a significant gap between the number of children waiting for evaluations and the specialists trained to diagnose them, especially in rural and under-resourced areas.
Directed by Rebecca McNally Keehn, an associate professor of pediatrics at the IU School of Medicine, the study will enroll nearly 200 clinicians across Indiana, Massachusetts and Tennessee and test different combinations of training strategies, including online learning modules, case-based observation and expert coaching. Partners include Vanderbilt University Medical Center and UMass Chan Medical School. The researchers will create a training roadmap so more pediatricians, family medicine doctors and nurse practitioners are equipped to evaluate children closer to home.
'Families in rural, underserved and historically marginalized communities often experience the greatest barriers to accessing timely autism diagnosis,' McNally Keehn said. 'A major goal of this work is ensuring that geography, income or availability of specialists does not determine whether a child can access an evaluation.' She encouraged caregivers with immediate developmental concerns not to wait for a formal diagnosis before seeking support.
The project builds on Indiana's Early Autism Evaluation (EAE) Hub system, an established network of primary care clinicians trained to provide streamlined diagnostic evaluations for young children at increased likelihood of autism, which has already shown that wait times for a diagnosis can be improved by empowering community clinicians.
Indiana University School of Medicine official announcement
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 印第安纳波利斯的 Riley 儿童医院（资料图）。CC BY-SA 3.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis (file photo). CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
