Each and everyone of US must get involved. Joining and following any and all of the Autism web sites. Like Autism Speaks, Oregon's Autism web site. Follow the traffic for political bills and laws and see who is active. WRITE YOUR SENATORS AND CONGRESSMEN FOR HELP. Keep in touch with your medical doctor for help and referral info. Talk with people like you are doing.Ask what evaluations people are seeking, what tests, what is coming through their schools by Federal Law for help on any and all levels. There is valued assistance available, but it won't be offered freely. This requires a lot of energy but it is how you as a parent give your child all you can to move his/her life forward. I will be posting more about this as the weeks unfold. I will also start posting specific entitlements by Federal Law.

Time for the USA to hit the snooze button again until it hits your family. I know there are differences with AIDS but there's no real urgency or organization compared to when Americans were scared to death in the early-80s to mid-90s. Autism is close but still isn't in the top 100 National Institutes of Health (NIH) research categories http://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending.aspx. $186 million for FY 2013 compared to nearly $3 billion for HIV/AIDS in the same year after over 30 years of intense research. Both diseases were very rare, causes unknown (for a while with AIDS) and the public awareness and attitudes changed. AIDS had the first disease red ribbon before they had ribbon for everything else. Not to get political on this forum but if this is as good as it gets with Pres. Healthcare, I don't see much change happening with autism at the federal level. States seem to vary a lot with level of care. I was surprised how little Obamacare is mentioned for good or bad on this forum.

Part of the increase is awareness of the issue leads to more evaluations occurring, the diagnosis testing has also changed to group things under the umbrella if autism, and there are also so many factors an L&D things we still don't understand about autism so until we are able to learn more, it will continue to rise

My NT oldest was actually born in 2002, while my autistic youngest was born in 2009. It's striking how many more kids we know with ASD my youngest's age compared with when my oldest was the same age (and I'm not talking kids we know only as a result of ASD-related services/activities). I'm not buying the whole "oh, it's just being diagnosed more frequently" because these are kids who are clearly impaired and would've been recognized as such a decade ago.

I do not think the numbers are actually going up, or that there are more children being affected then before it is more that there are more correct diagnosis going on right now whereas before children were going undiagnosed or misdiagnosed