Age of Autism: Minnesota and the CDC Confer on Somali Autism Situation

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Minnesota and

the CDC Confer on Somali Autism Situation: CDC’s Office of the Director:

Autism May Result from “Chemical Exposures”

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Editor's Note: Welcome Huffington Post readers. referenced the post

below on HuffPo HERE.

By Kirby

On

Saturday, November 15, I attended a daylong forum in Minneapolis

on autism in the Somali immigrant community there, where the rate of autism

among Somali children in the public schools had been reported at 1 in 28 kids.

At the

forum, Dr. Judy Punyko, an epidemiologist for the

State Department of Health, was expected to present at least preliminary

findings on the prevalence of autism among Somali schoolchildren in Minnesota.

The 80 or so Somali parents who attended were disappointed, by all accounts,

that Dr. Punyko had no way to tell them if autism

among their children was, as they strongly suspect, more common than among

non-Somalis the same age.

Dr. Punyko said she had conferred with officials at the CDC on

how to best measure the rate of autism in this particular population, but that

she was still waiting for data requested from Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS),

even though she had put together a panel of experts to examine the issue back

in August. She said that MPS would get her the data sometime in December, and

that a report on the prevalence issue should be ready in March, 2009.

A few

days after the forum, I discovered two things.

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CDC’s Office of the Director: Autism May Result from “Chemical

Exposures” " »