New Study Identifies Treatment Disparities In Children Diagnosed With Autism Spectrum Disorder
According to the CDC, about one in forty-four children have autism spectrum disorder (ASD). While past studies have identified more health care service usage among children with ASD as compared to the general pediatric population, new data analysis has discovered healthcare usage disparities across genders, racial, and ethnic groups.
Professor Amber Angell of the University of Southern California led the recently published study in Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Angell and her team gathered their data from OneFlorida Data Trust, a database that is home to information from twenty-two hospitals and over twelve hundred medical practices throughout Florida.
Through the use of statistical probability modeling, the research team found drastic differences in U.S. health care usage depending on gender, race, and ethnicity.
Angell described how this data inquiry and analysis was the first of its kind.
“In recent years, researchers and clinicians have started to pay attention to understudied autistic groups, including girls and Black and Latinx children. Although, we do not know much about whether or how these kids are getting the healthcare they need,” Angell said.
“This analysis provides a starting point based on real-world clinical data to see, on a large scale, how these groups are utilizing not only primary health care but also specialty care like neurology and psychology,” Angell continued.
In their analysis, the team found autistic boys were much more likely to seek our neurology and psychology visits as opposed to autistic girls.
On the flip side, autistic boys had lower annual primary care, neurology, and gastroenterology visits.
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Additionally, Black autistic children had much higher odds of receiving any primary care, neurology visits, and developmental-behavioral pediatrics (DBP). However, they had lower odds of any gastroenterology visits.
And in terms of ethnic disparities, Hispanic/Latinx children diagnosed with ASD showed higher rates of primary care, neurology, and DBP visits. However, they were less likely to receive psychological care.
Some of these results did shock Angell since they went against prior studies’ findings.
“We had expected females to use more health care than males. So, we were surprised to learn that autistic males had significantly higher odds of neurology and psychiatry/psychology visits,” Angell said.
“We were also surprised to find that Hispanic/Latinx autistic children had higher odds of any kind of visit, with the exception of psychology, since research had shown that Hispanic/Latinx children have reduced access to subspecialty care,” Angell continued.
While this research does shed essential light on the current usage of health care services amongst autistic children, it has also sparked new questions regarding how clinicians identify autism in different groups.
“It is important the provider education and training for identifying and managing these children’s health needs are based on recent data. Some important future studies will look more closely at why and how the utilization differences we found are happening,” Angell explained.
To read the study’s complete findings, visit the link here.
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