WASHINGTON, DC — Today, Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06) announced that Rutgers University has been awarded $550,000 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to continue ongoing research to identify and evaluate changes in the number of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and other developmental disabilities in the state of New Jersey. The CDC suggests that 1 in 68 school age child in the United States is living with autism. However, in New Jersey, that number is 1 in every 45.
Rutgers University is a part of the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, which is a group of programs at sites across the country funded by the CDC to estimate the number of children with ASD and other developmental disabilities living in different areas of the United States. This funding will be for the first year of the program’s four-year cycle.
“We must take on autism as the urgent public health concern it is, especially in New Jersey,” said Congressman Pallone. “For years, Rutgers has been a leader with regard to autism research, and this latest award will allow their invaluable research to continue. Their ongoing work will help us more fully understand the different ways that ASD affects children throughout our state and make sure that children are properly diagnosed. We’ve made significant strides over the past decade in confronting this disease, but there is still much more that remains to be done.”
Congressman Pallone has repeatedly spoken out against the harmful, across the board budget cuts, known as sequestration, that slashed critical funding to autism research and programs. He has consistently urged his colleagues in Congress to prioritize policies that do not further reduce the budgets of agencies like the CDC, which monitors the prevalence of autism in America.
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