An estimated 1 in 68 (14.6 per 1,000) school-aged children have been identified with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to a CDC report published today in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) Surveillance Summary. This report shows essentially no change in ASD prevalence, the proportion of school aged-children with ASD, from the previous report released in 2014. However, it is too soon to know whether ASD prevalence in the United States might be starting to stabilize. CDC will continue tracking ASD prevalence to better understand changes over time.
The data come from CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network– a tracking system that provides estimates of the prevalence and characteristics of ASD among 8-year-old children in 11 communities within Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah, and Wisconsin. The data in the latest report are for 2012 while the data in the previous 2014 report were from 2010.