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COVID-19 has certainly altered every aspect of our lives, and diagnosing autism was no different. Even though lack of contact and masks made making a diagnosis harder to do, continuing to diagnose autism during COVID was of paramount importance. I talked with Dr. Catherine Lord, a very well-known researcher in the autism world, as well as a Professor of Psychiatry and Education at UCLA. She was able to develop new techniques to assess children, even in our global pandemic, and get them on the right track to getting the treatment they needed.
Before the pandemic, Dr. Lord was able to perform long and thorough evaluations of children to test for autism. In addition, she was able to coordinate backup services such as speech and OT. The COVID-19 pandemic shut that down quickly like it did so many other things. Patients, of course, still needed screening, and many wanted the ADOS test. The ADOS test was very ineffective at this point in the pandemic. With everyone being masked, the results were inconclusive, which wastes precious time that children could be using to get services.
Dr. Lord was able to work with her group and create a shorter, twelve-minute evaluation, that was able to screen them. The evaluation, BOSA (Brief Observations of Symptoms of Autism), was done at home with the parents, they sent a video of it to Dr. Lord’s team, and they evaluated it and came up with recommendations. It doesn’t completely diagnose autism, but it can give parents a starting point and something to present to insurance if they are waiting on that.
Even with a global pandemic, Dr. Lord made it possible for parents and children to continue down the path of an autism diagnosis and treatment. Hopefully, as time goes on, the wait for a diagnosis and therapies will lessen, and children will be able to continue down the path that is best for them.
Today’s Guest
Dr. Catherine Lord is the George Tarjan Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Education at the Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She is a practicing clinical psychologist whose primary focus is autism and related disorders across the lifespan from toddlers through adulthood.
Her research and clinical work have involved the development of diagnostic instruments that describe individual profiles of skills and weaknesses and carrying out longitudinal studies from age 15 months up to 30 years with the goal of identifying protective and risk factors that influence milestones of progress over the years. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the American Association of Arts and Sciences.
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