Barry Baines

I talked to some of my family physician friends.

I talked to three of my pediatric colleagues with autism.

I said, well, what do you do for autism?

Or where can I find a resource to get on health chatter, especially with all the stuff that's going on?

on the public health sphere.

And this is extremely perplexing for general pediatricians, for general

family physicians, practitioners, generalists, because it is, um, difficult to diagnose and the, the level of comorbidities though, and then the last piece, and then I'll be quiet for a while.

Um, I love the, uh, spectrum diagram that we have, and I know that that'll be posted, um, you know, on, on health chatter.

But the thing is, when you think about a, uh,

a spectrum of a disease like diabetes.

Okay.

Usually you can measure that by your A1C and, you know, your heart disease.

So it's more, it is more linear in a way that can be measured.

So it's more like, I think of it as up and down, whereas with the spectrum for autism is very horizontal.

You know, it's like the pool, you know, or you throw the rock in the pool and the ripples are

you know, go out and it has different levels of findings of behaviors.

And then the last piece is that oftentimes, and this, you know, Ellie is where I, you know, thank you, thank you for all that you do.

But the idea of setting up all of these supportive services that really can help people with autism to manage behaviors better so that they are able to remain

and become very functional people in society.

One of the people I always think of is Temple Grandin, who's very well known.