ANN ARBOR—A 10-hour detailed autism assessment typically costs $2,400 but more than 90 percent of the patients at the University of Michigan Autism and Communication Disorders Center receive it for free, thanks to federal research and stimulus support.

Center director Catherine Lord has expanded her staff from 30 to 45 people over the past year thanks to the added government support, as well as private donations, allowing her to hire new people to conduct research and evaluate a record 700 patients last year.

“We have six intervention studies going on, five assessment studies and three interview studies, so fewer than 10 percent of our families actually paid for their care,” Lord said.

Patients receive a report with recommendations on the best course to follow in determining what communication issues their child has and exactly what the best approaches are for helping their child grow to their highest potential.

Lord, a nationally recognized autism researcher who pioneered techniques for early detection, is a leader in several national research studies, including an 11-university consortium to gather and bank DNA samples from 3,000 autism patients across North America.

When she came to U-M in 2001, she started the center with a small staff of five. It has continued to grow, adding staff from entry-level interviewers to master’s-level speech graduates to highly trained Ph.D.s.

Lord played a key role in learning how to properly diagnose two-year-olds a decade ago and is making new gains diagnosing young children at the U-M center.

While medications have helped with related conditions such as depression and hyperactivity, the best way to deal with autism is to intervene as early as possible to treat the condition, she said. Children who developed even some very simple speech skills prior to the first time they were evaluated at age 2 were more independent, more successful in school and more socially developed than other autistic children who had only slightly fewer skills.

Autism, now found in one of every 200 children, is a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life. Autistic spectrum disorders impact the normal development of the brain processes related to social interaction and communication skills. Children and adults with autism typically have difficulties with verbal and nonverbal communication, social interaction and leisure or play activities.

“It’s going to be a long haul toward finding a cure, but if I didn’t think it was going to happen at some point, we wouldn’t be working so hard behind the scenes to help the neurobiological studies,” Lord said.

Autism and Communication Disorders Center