The DT’s role in the Autism Diagnostic Process

 This presentation will address the growing “autism waitlist crisis,” the two-year gap between initial screening and formal autism evaluation—a delay that prevents many children from receiving intervention during a critical developmental window. It will explore how a shortage of specialized diagnosticians contributes to this backlog and introduce a novel Early Intervention (EI) Autism Diagnostic Pathway designed to expand diagnostic capacity within existing systems of care.

The session will outline the rationale for integrating autism diagnostic evaluations into the Early Intervention system, where many children are already referred by pediatricians. Attendees will learn about the structure of the new pathway, including its use of a multidisciplinary team approach, direct child observation, caregiver interviews, and individualized feedback sessions with tailored intervention recommendations.

The presentation will review findings from a prospective, double-masked, within-subject comparison study conducted within the Illinois Early Intervention System. The study examined diagnostic agreement between EI teams and an expert reference team among 639 toddlers aged 15 to 36 months. Key outcome measures—including agreement rates, sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, and kappa statistics—will be discussed to evaluate the pathway’s diagnostic accuracy.

The session will conclude with a discussion of implementation factors to consider when implementing an autism diagnostic pathway within the Early Intervention system.

Trainer Bio:

Megan Roberts, PhD, CCC-SLP, is a professor in the Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. Her work focuses on improving access to effective early intervention for toddlers with developmental delays (e.g., autism, hearing loss). This clinically-based line of research examines new ways of identifying autism and different variations of caregiver-mediated communication interventions tailored specifically for different populations of children. Her research has been funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and the Institute of Education Sciences.

Early Intervention Credits:  TBD