From Clinics to Communities: Addressing Global Disparities in Autism Care

The vast majority of the world’s children with autism live in low and middle income countries; in contrast, the vast majority of the resources to support families and children impacted by autism are concentrated in high income countries. As a result, the detection and diagnosis of autism in low income settings is delayed by several years; and for those families and children who are able to get a diagnosis, only a tiny proportion will receive any clinical intervention. Those that do will often be relying entirely on poorly evidenced specialized care of uncertain quality at high out-of-pocket cost. This lecture will describe the innovative approaches of a program of research in South Asia which has sought to address these large detection and care gaps. The approach has adapted well-evidenced practice in UK into low resource settings using community delivered technology and front-line worker enabled interventions, and has done this without loss of original intervention quality or effectiveness. The focus will be to consider how such approaches may help expand access to evidence based care for the large majority of the world’s children who are currently unreached.