Ellie Wilson

Our numbers here are one in 28.

Absolutely.

What a great question, Clarence.

I think there are so many responses that I would like to promote, but let's start with that sort of individual and family unit, because that is sometimes where the magic really happens, of course.

I think first things first, you know, sort of awareness and acceptance campaigns are really important because so many people still do

misunderstand the nature of autism.

Of course, you know, if we were to compare it to another sort of well-known disability like Down syndrome, you know, there, there is something you can see in a person with Downs.

And when you look at an autistic person, you don't always know by looking at them that they are autistic.

And that combined with the fact that we are studying people's behavior and

generally means that there's just lots of room for misunderstanding, for bias, or for misinformation.

And so I do think we have a deep responsibility to not just be out here saying facts about autism, but to have meaningful connections with facets of the community that sort of have their own challenges unique to autism and disability.

You might know that one part of the prevalent story here in Minnesota is that we experience the richness of a large Somali community.

And even though autism is something that really does occur relatively consistently across all generations,

across all racial and ethnic groups, we are starting to be able to prove that the prevalence in the Somali community is almost twice as high as what it is in the rest of the community.

So that means that when we think about community engagement, we're not just thinking about it broadly, we're thinking about what are some of those unique factors

intersections where we can show up and do the extra work of understanding not only how does this manifest in a particular community, but what are the attitudes about it?

What are the sources of that misinformation?

What are the strengths we can leverage about various communities in order to get this done in a meaningful way?

Because the misinformation around autism does seem to be our greatest dragon to slay, if you will.

Like it is what always haunts us.