The Johns Hopkins Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities Epidemiology is the CADDRE site studying ASDs in Maryland and Delaware. The areas in Maryland included in the project are Baltimore City and the following counties: Baltimore, Carroll, Cecil, Harford and Howard. The entire state of Delaware is also included.

To achieve its goals, CADDE has four core activities:

1. Monitoring activities

Currently, we do not know how many children living in Maryland and Delaware have an ASD. We do know that during the 2000-2001 school year, 209 children ages 3-11 years in Delaware and 1,616 children ages 3-11 years in Maryland were classified as having autism under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA is the federal law that supports special education and related services for children and youth with disabilities. However, there are additional children with ASDs who are classified in other disability categories under IDEA. There are also other children with ASDs who are in regular education classes, who attend private school, or who are home schooled.

The Maryland/Delaware Center will use multiple sources to obtain a more accurate estimate of the number of children in the study area with an ASD. The Center will study whether ASDs are more
common in some groups of children than in others and whether the number of children with ASDs is changing over time. The monitoring activities will focus on children 8 years old. CADDE will disseminate the results of the monitoring activities to the public on a yearly basis and anticipates posting the results of the 2000 study year on the Center's Web site by the end of this year.

2. CADDRE Case Cohort Study

The center will work with the other CADDRE programs to find causes of ASDs or factors that make it more likely that a child will have an ASD. Families who take part in the study will answer survey questions; children with ASDs will be tested, and staff will look at children's birth records. Children aged 3 to 5 years will be included in the combined centers study. Children with ASDs will be compared with children who do not have an ASD.

3. Special Studies

CADDE is interested in studying interactions between genetic and environmental factors and their role in causing ASDs. The Investigating Developmental Delays Study (IDDES) will begin this summer and will serve both as a pilot study for the larger case-cohort study and will also allow CADDE to investigate other research aims on autism not covered by the larger study, including correlating archived records of children's medical history with parent self-reports and special education classification and comparing the performance of two screening questionnaires for diagnosing ASDs.

4. Sharing Information

CADDE plans to share what is learned from these studies through mailings targeted to key audiences, news releases to the lay and professional media, sponsored symposia on ASDs, scientific publications and the Center's web site which includes information about ongoing activities at CADDE, links to information for parents, educators and clinicians, as well as links to resources for ASDs and other developmental disabilities.

For further information, please contact:

Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities Epidemiology (CADDE)
Johns Hopkins University
Bloomberg School of Public Health
615 N Wolfe St, Room 6039
Baltimore MD 21205

Phone: 443-287-3563
Fax: 410-502-6652
Email: cadde@jhsph.edu
Web site: www.jhsph.edu/cadde

© 2003

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