OARacle Newsletter

At the end of September, NIH awarded more than $50 million in funding to 13 projects that will examine how genetics and environmental factors determine a person’s risk of developing autism. Those projects, part of NIH’s Autism Data Science Initiative (ADSI), will be housed at universities, including Drexel, Emory, Johns Hopkins, University of North Carolina, and University of California, and hospitals such as Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Boston Children’s Hospital. 

Researchers will draw on genomic, epigenomic, metabolomic, proteomic, clinical, behavioral, and autism services data and generate targeted new data to examine what factors are leading to an increase in autism diagnoses, including the influence of environmental contaminants like pesticides and air pollution, perinatal complications, maternal diet and nutrition, aging in adults with autism and more, as noted in a Disability Scoop article.

In a press release dated September 22, Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., NIH director, said that the initiative “will unite powerful datasets in ways never before possible. By bringing together genetics, biology, and environmental exposures, we are opening the door to breakthroughs that will deepen our understanding of autism and improve lives.”

Autism advocates and experts expressed cautious optimism, reported The New York Times. In the Disability Scoop article, Helen Tager-Flusberg, director of the Center for Autism Research Excellence at Boston University, who’s leading the Coalition of Autism Scientists, a group of more than 300 researchers in the field, noted that “the contrast between the exciting science reflected in the ADSI awards and the simplistic pseudoscience views expressed by the president and (U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) could not be more striking.”

The chief science officer at Autism Speaks, Andy Shih, said in Disability Scoop that his organization is glad to see an increased investment in autism, but that it is “important this funding is an addition to support for existing autism research, data, and healthcare training programs that Congress has already authorized in the Autism CARES Act.” 

“We’re very enthusiastic and very optimistic that these projects will lead to important answers, no matter what question they’re looking at,” said Alycia Halladay, the chief science officer at the Autism Science Foundation, in a New York Times article. The chosen projects, she said, “had to do with everything from toxicants to nutrition to early contextual factors like socioeconomic status.”

One of the funded projects, led by researchers at Center for Autism Research at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, will investigate, among other things, changes in the diagnostic criteria for autism, air and water quality, green space, poverty, and early childhood interventions, according to the Times article. Judith S. Miller, an associate professor at the Center, said that researchers will be allowed to guard patient data closely dispelling fears that arose in the spring over the idea of a federal registry of autistic people.

Jonathan Sebat, a leader in the field of autism genetics at the University of California, San Diego received funding as part of a team that is trying to use genetics to examine the role of environmental exposures in autism diagnoses, as noted in the Times article. He told the Times that his fears that the federal government was trying to vet research proposals too quickly “were unfounded — the applications really did get a rigorous review.”

This good news is in contrast to the 26% decline in federal funding for autism research during the first four months of the year, reported by Reuters in May 2025. It will also be carried on even as other research projects funded by NIH continue to look into the widely discredited link between vaccines and autism, like, for example, a vaccine safety review led by David Geier, a discredited researcher and vaccine skeptic.

Jill Escher, president of the National Council on Severe Autism, said in the Reuter’s article that Kennedy’s push for autism research is “an incredible opportunity for science and understanding autism…But I’m not at all convinced that they will spend that money wisely. If they spend it on mold, vaccines, or similar exposures unlikely to pose any autism risk, that’s not a good expenditure of research dollars.” 

Sherri Alms is the freelance editor of The OARacle, a role she took on in 2007. She has been a freelance writer and editor for more than 20 years.