The Autism CARES Act (Autism Collaboration, Accountability, Research, Education, and Support Act of 2019) has been introduced in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The existing Autism CARES Act will expire this year, so a new bill is needed to continue the work.

Autism CARES is good for the autism communities. Autism CARES continues the government’s focus on funding autism research and coordinating research with nongovernmental groups. This work has been ongoing since the Combating Autism Act was enacted in 2006.

The bill has yet to come up for a vote. It has been gaining sponsors (85 in the House and 22 in the Senate). My senators are not yet cosponsors of the bill, so I sent them messages urging them to do so. It’s easy. You can find your House representative here and your Senator here.

The text of the bill can be found in the link: H.R.1058 – Autism CARES Act of 2019. It’s basically a continuation and update of the existing bill–which as I noted above expires this year.

If you are wondering what the bill does, the current law states (among many other things):

The Director of NIH (in this section referred to as the “Director”) shall, subject to the availability of appropriations, expand, intensify, and coordinate the activities of the National Institutes of Health with respect to research on Autism Spectrum Disorder, including basic and clinical research in fields including pathology, developmental neurobiology, genetics, epigenetics, pharmacology, nutrition, immunology, neuroimmunology, neurobehavioral development, endocrinology, gastroenterology, and toxicology. Such research shall investigate the cause (including possible environmental causes), diagnosis or rule out, early detection, prevention, services, supports, intervention, and treatment of autism spectrum disorder.

The current law also authorizes appropriations. Which means Congress says they are allowed to set aside a lot of money ($190M) for autism research, but doesn’t force Congress to actually put that in the budget. Still, it’s a lot better than most of the disability or disease communities have as a commitment.

Let me put that another way–in legislative language Autism CARES is a single disease specific bill. Leave aside the term “disease”. It’s a bill that supports a single community. Congress has long been pushing to move away from that. Autism has kept this status even while Congress has moved to restrict it. The way to insure that we keep this in place is to act. Let your legislators know it is time to support Autism CARES.

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By Matt Carey