We Need Your Feedback!
Act Early Connecticut
- The Connecticut Picture
- Goal of the Act Early Connecticut Team
- Connecticut's Act Early Plan
- Resources
- Funding
- State Participants
Spotlight
Act Early Ambassador for CT Selected
Tierney Giannotti has been selected to serve as an Act
Early Ambassador for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” program.
Tierney will play an important role in educating Connecticut’s parents, healthcare professionals,
and early educators about early childhood development, warning signs of autism
and other developmental disabilities, and the importance of acting early on concerns
about a child’s development.
Read more...
- Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) - providing information and resources for healthcare providers
- Autism: Be a Family's Champion, Learn the Signs
- Autism Research: Read What CDC is Doing to Understand Autism
- What We've Learned about Autism Spectrum Disorder
- A Minute of Health with CDC - Autism Awareness
- A Cup of Health with CDC – Autism Awareness
- Autism Speaks - IACC April 11, 2011Meeting Summary
- USDA Cooperative Extension Service's Just in Time Parenting (JITP)
- Early Identification of ASD Module
- Autism Case Training (ACT): A Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics Curriculum
- Learn the Signs Act Early
Legislative Forum on Developing Best Practices for Early Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders
Act Early
Background
Recent research indicates that children with ASDs are not diagnosed, on
average, until 13 months after their initial screening by a qualified
professional (Wiggins, Bajo & Rice, 2006). This is in part due to lengthy
waiting lists for diagnostic evaluations, which ultimately delay entry of
children into services. Further, idiosyncratic diagnostic evaluations lead
to the need for the replication of an evaluation and unnecessary cost and
time expenditure, as well as increased worry for parents when both false
positive and false negative diagnoses are generated. In order to streamline
the diagnostic evaluation of children with suspected ASDs, states have
developed standardized yet flexible approaches to evaluating children and
have defined acceptable approaches to diagnosis within their state. The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have developed Autism A.L.A.R.M.
Guidelines, which provide a surveillance and screening algorithm and lay the
foundation upon which the work of the Connecticut team will be based. In
addition, Missouri and California have convened working groups to define
best practice within the context of existing resources so that children who
qualify for ASDs diagnosis can move quickly into receiving intervention.
In 2007, a partnership was formed between the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the Association for University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD) to implement the “Act Early” Regional Summit Project. The vision of the project, supported by the Learn the Signs Act Early Campaign and the Combating Autism Act, was to bring together leaders from the early intervention and early childhood community for the purpose of enhancing relationships and collaborations between key leaders in the state.
Website Feedback Survey
Please take a moment to complete our brief Website Satisfaction Survey to send us your comments, provide feedback or report any problems you experienced finding information on our website. We use these responses to evaluate the quality of our website and its value as an informational resource. The survey also helps us to meet important reporting and funding requirements. We read all feedback carefully, but please note that we cannot respond to the comments you submit.