The Nonprofit Leader's Guide
We want to bring you the thoughts of some of the most impactful leaders in health and human services. Their real-world experience in driving growth and impact and leading in hard times might be just the extra dose of motivation and common sense you need to bring to your organization whether you are an Executive Team member or the Board President. We think that leading the conversation about the nonprofit business sector and what nonprofits should think about now is part of our mission, “Building A World that realizes the boundless potential of all people.”
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The Nonprofit Leader's Guide
Autism: Myths, Facts, and Future Pathways
The autism conversation in America is at a critical turning point. As public figures make sweeping statements about vaccines, research quality, and the capabilities of autistic individuals, our experts step in to separate fact from fiction with clarity and compassion.
Dr. Karen Lindgren and Dr. Cynthia Ripsin bring over 50 years of combined clinical experience to dismantle persistent myths—most notably the thoroughly debunked vaccine-autism connection that originated from a fraudulent 12-person study. They explain why studies of over two million children have conclusively found no link, yet misinformation continues to influence healthcare decisions.
The conversation dives into the remarkable diversity within autism, challenging simplistic characterizations that paint all autistic individuals with the same brush. From individuals requiring 24-hour support to those independently building careers and relationships, the spectrum defies easy generalizations. This variance extends to healthcare needs, where standard medical environments can create barriers through sensory overload, communication challenges, and rigid procedures.
Particularly enlightening is the discussion of "profound autism"—a term describing individuals with significant support needs who represent over 30% of the autistic population yet receive less than 6% of research attention.
The experts also unpack the reported five-fold increase in autism rates since 2000, explaining how improved screening, broader diagnostic criteria, and increased awareness—particularly among previously overlooked populations like girls and women—have dramatically shaped these statistics.
What emerges is a call for nuanced understanding, targeted research that addresses the full spectrum of needs, and healthcare systems designed with neurodiversity in mind. Rather than focusing on causes or cures, our experts advocate for practical improvements that enhance quality of life for autistic individuals and their families today.
Join us for this essential conversation that moves beyond headlines to explore what meaningful support really looks like for autistic individuals across their lifespan.
Welcome everyone to Boundless Abilities. I'm your host, Scott Light. So, to put it bluntly here, autism has been in the news a lot these days. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy has made statements both in his current role and as a private citizen over the years about vaccines, about the quality of autism, research and factors that have influenced the rise in autism cases. Here at Boundless, we want all forms of government and all people to engage with us.
Speaker 1:We welcome the added attention and discussions from everyone and we certainly welcome increased investments that enable all of us to better understand the disorder. But it's also our responsibility to speak truth to power on what we know about autism at this very moment and to debunk myths without squelching this vital discussion. Well, fortunately unfortunately for you, our listeners I have two experts here today to do just that. Dr Karen Lindgren is the chief clinical officer at Bancroft. She oversees healthcare and nursing services, the Applied Behavior Analysis Center of Excellence and quality assurance across the organization. As a licensed psychologist, she has more than 25 years experience in neuropsychological assessment and treatment of brain injury and neurological impairment. Dr Lengren, welcome to you, thank you so much Scott Glad to be here.
Speaker 1:Dr Cindy Ripson is here as well. She's been on a previous podcast too. She's the medical director of Boundless Health board-certified family physician with over 25 years experience caring for patients of all ages. As our medical director, dr Ripson is responsible for providing leadership and direction on overall goals, plus provide best-in-class health care to our patients. Welcome, dr Ripson.
Speaker 3:Thank you, really glad to be here, scott.
Speaker 1:So let's start with how I began, in that autism is really part of the public discussion right now. So let me try to paint a picture here with my first question. If you both had a piece of paper with a line down the middle and let's say the header on the left reads positives and the header on the right at the top reads your concerns, how would you split that page with what is being said about autism right now? Dr Ripson, why don't we begin with your concerns? Let's start with kind of on the right side of the page there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so a lot of the conversation now is predicated on the fact that there's some misinformed information in the community, but they're also really well-publicized misinformation. Information in the community, but they're also really well-publicized misinformation, especially the recent comments regarding individuals with autism who will never hold a job, who will never pay taxes, who will never write a poem, for example. Probably 40% of the adult individuals in my practice actually have jobs and they get paid for those jobs. So that's a major concern is that this is misinformation that's being pushed out into the community, and the problem with that is that it clouds the whole conversation because there are many individuals with autism who will not hold a job and they will not pay taxes. It doesn't mean they're not important people and it means we really need to help step up the services for them.
Speaker 1:Well, and we've had people on this very podcast, many who have jobs and are paying their taxes and again fulfilling that list that you just mentioned Absolutely. What other concerns do you have?
Speaker 3:So in the state of Ohio recently it's been. Cannabis has become legal for recreational use and there's been marketing pushes into the legislature to say that individuals with autism should use cannabis as a treatment for autism and behaviors. The research really suggests that individuals with autism have a a 10 percent higher risk of psychosis compared to the general population, but we're pretty sure it's not actually a treatment for behaviors that is appropriate.
Speaker 1:Dr Lindgren, let's begin on the right side of your page. What are your concerns right now?
Speaker 2:So a couple of points I'd like to make just to start out. When I talk about autism, I do use autistic individuals and people with autism interchangeably to represent the broad scope of people's personal preferences, and that actually kind of gets to my right side of the page concern, which is the conversation has been very reductionistic and reduced to very broad brush statements as opposed to the fine level of detail that's needed On the other side of the page, pros column. We need a conversation around autism. The challenge is we need a more refined strategic conversation that includes all voices and includes the full spectrum of individuals with autism and includes the full spectrum of needs that our country has around the autistic individuals. So the challenge I have with the government's statements, much like Dr Ripson's, are the broad brush statements that lean towards misinformation and that are tilting potentially the strategy of our country going forward.
Speaker 1:Okay, what positives right now Dr Ripson are there, with there being so much discussion around autism right now.
Speaker 3:So in 2022, our federal government funded nine centers of excellence for autism and the awards were a total of $100 million, and these are varied topics, from the use of health services and subpopulations of people with autism, which is really important aging and autism understanding, the interplay of genetics and environmental effects for individuals with autism and their health outcomes. These nine total centers come from a really deep understanding of the complexity of studying autism and I think it's wonderful and this is a five-year study. 2022 is when it started, so probably 2027 is when we'll get some information from this. But I also think Dr Lindgren is also at a Center for Excellence for Autism with regard to behaviors. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think that the positives are that people are really doing great work and that great work simply needs to be funded and publicized more.
Speaker 1:With your opening remarks, you both are getting to really the next thing I wanted to bring up, and that is myth-busting. So, dr Langren, what are some common myths out there about autism in general? And then can we also go into vaccines and autism too?
Speaker 2:Yes, and actually that was going to be my number one myth. The number one myth out there is that vaccines somehow are related to causing autism, which has been completely, completely debunked and is not true and really is a public health risk. Because if parents are concerned about administering vaccines to their children, we're opening up our country to a whole nother potential wave of problems around contagious illnesses and preventable illnesses. So that's the number one myth around that.
Speaker 2:The second myth around autism, which I'm afraid has gained steam because of these comments, is that autistic individuals, seeing an autistic individual, they're all the same. They all have the same deficits, they all have the same strengths, they all have the same presentation, which we know is not true. There is just like there's no end to the variety of people that you meet. There's no end to the variety of individuals with autism and they all have a different profile of strengths and weaknesses. And the reason that is really important to me is that when I heard those comments being made, my concern was for the new parent who might be having their child diagnosed with autism for the first time and assuming that what the secretary said is the future, is the truth of the future for their child and really what we know is that every single journey, every single trajectory is different and it's really important for us as a country to understand that and embrace that as we develop our strategy around autism services.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'm going to just move back into the autism and vaccines and be a little more specific about that, because it's something that has really persisted in spite of evidence against it.
Speaker 3:So in 1998, lancet, which is a medical journal, published a study that said that individuals who had the MMR the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine developed autism at higher rates. When you dig into that study, there were actually only 12 individuals in this study. Three of them never had autism to begin with, five of them developed autism before they got the vaccine and the others there was no relationship. That was such a fraudulent study that both of the individuals who did the study lost their medical license in Great Britain. But the myth still persists, even though there have been over 2 million children studied in really high quality research studies. That demonstrates that there is no association whatsoever. And it's important that sometimes people hear well, there's no association because you haven't found it, but in reality there never was an association and that it actually has been debunked. But it still unfortunately persists and we kind of can see that in our environment now with the reduction in vaccines that parents are giving their children.
Speaker 1:I'm curious to both of you are you hearing more from people, whether it's parents or just it could be a neighbor across the street from you who knows what you do, who knows your respective expertise? Are you hearing more and more people saying something like well, hey, what's all this talk about vaccines and autism? Are you finding that you're having to answer that question more and more these days?
Speaker 3:Not necessarily more and more, but because my practice has a lot of individuals with autism, I do run into parents who have not vaccinated their children because of that link and they made that decision. Maybe their child now is 20 years old, but they made the decision when he or she was a child. So, yeah, we definitely see that still.
Speaker 2:The only thing I might add is that Bancroft serves individuals with significant autism, who have what some people call profound autism. It's an autism for individuals who require 24-hour support, who have significant behavioral and cognitive needs. But we also serve people who are medically complex and we have a small population of children here whose parents might not be able to get them vaccinated and they're more at risk because of the reduction in vaccination kind of across the country. So we do see here some issues with parents being reluctant to vaccinate their already autistic children because of concerns of exacerbation and that's mildly problematic. But for us it's not really a huge deal because we serve people who already have a diagnosis.
Speaker 1:Let me back up just a little bit in time. I want to go back to April, when this latest report from the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, came out. There was also a press conference that day where quote environmental factors were discussed as contributors. And then that prompted Dr Joshua Anbar, who helped with the report, also teaches at Arizona State University, to say this quote autism's not an infectious disease. There aren't preventative measures we can take. End quote. Can you both share what the research says about DNA and environmental factors related to autism?
Speaker 3:Let's take an example of someone with Down syndrome, for example. That's a very clear genetic mutation of chromosome number 21. So when someone has Down syndrome, they always have an anomaly of the chromosome 21. The most relevant and current research regarding autism is there's probably not a mutation of the genes themselves, but rather a phenomenon we call epigenetics, which means something is turning on and turning off the expression of genes, but the underlying genes themselves stay the same expression of genes, but the underlying genes themselves stay the same. And that's still. We see that interplay in a lot of chronic medical conditions a little less understood than we'd like it to be, but there's a lot of research into that.
Speaker 1:Well, as we said, we welcome these discussions, but it's also imperative to this whole discussion to discuss language, and, dr Langer, you talked a little bit about interchangeable language and terms and things like that. Let's dive into that a little bit more. We're always getting new listeners to our episodes, so why don't we tick through some guidelines, some terms and just overall knowledge that all of us need to know or maybe need to brush up on when it comes to language around autism?
Speaker 2:Sure, and I'd like to start off by saying that there is really a lot of talk around autism in our country today, for really good reason. So the autistic community has been historically excluded from the research that involves them, from the research that involves them, and autism in the past has really been pathologized only and has not taken strength-based approach. For those reasons, there are segments of the autistic community that, very rightfully, have become very vocal around the way we talk about autism, the way autism is researched, the way we've discussed it. At the same time, there's a growing community of parents mostly, who are raising children with significant, significant impairments, children who require 24-hour care because of the significance of their medical, their behavioral needs or their cognitive needs. Bancroft serves a large number of these children and these adults. These are individuals who really require an adult to be with them 24-7 for their safety, their activities of daily living. So we have really two very different pockets of voices that are making their statements and trying to have their voice heard and understood in the country. So, for those reasons, when we talk about autism, we're not talking about one particular type of person or one particular pathway or one individual. We're talking about the entire spectrum of needs. So for those reasons there are people who prefer individuals with autism as language. Autistic individuals might prefer autistic individual an identity-first language that sort of captures the pride that might go along with being neurodiverse for an individual. So even within the confines of autism within our country, these very different voices are trying to influence the conversation, and for good reason. They're both represent groups that have not really gotten a lot of attention and have kind of been ignored in the population.
Speaker 2:So one thing I want to mention about profound autism. Profound autism is this term which for some individuals is controversial, but it really refers to individuals who have significant cognitive needs and intellectual disability coupled with significant symptoms of autism, and they require 24-hour support. And one of the interesting things about profound autism in our country is that while individuals with profound autism account for more than 30% of autistic individuals, less than 6% of the research has focused on the needs of this group, and this group, from our country's perspective, requires the most services. So they're one of the most costly groups. They're individuals who require a full array of behavioral services, medical services, support services. So we've really not, as a country, done a good job investigating the needs of this population and what we can be doing to make the life course outcomes for these individuals and for their families better, because their families are inherently included in this discussion as well.
Speaker 3:One thing that's not always known about autism is that it can or does not coexist with intellectual disability, and intellectual disability is on a spectrum as well. So very much what Dr Lingern was saying. Intellectual disability is anywhere from mild to moderate to severe to profound Autism. Can individuals with autism some do not have intellectual disability, but many do at various levels. And then the third component is the language level. So we think about autism in terms of autism, and then intellectual disability and then language disorder, and we look at the interplay of all of those and, as Dr Lindgren is saying, definitely individuals who have profound intellectual disability oftentimes then will have profound autism, what we call profound autism, and they absolutely require services that right now they're not getting.
Speaker 1:Let me ask another, what I'll call another baseline question, and for that I want to come back to that CDC report, because I pulled out some data from that report and one number particularly got my attention and it's this one Autism rates among children have increased nearly five-fold since the year 2000. Can both of you help us understand where we are with this current data?
Speaker 3:I think there's some disagreement regarding it, right, like there is, and I think the other thing I want to say about research and autism or any committed group of people looking at any medical or health condition there's going to be disagreement, and it's okay. The less we disagree, the more we're probably not probing the depths, right. But in this situation, I'm not sure that there is truly an increase. I'm certainly true there's likely an increase in incidence of autism, but so much of it is improved screening and I know that there's individuals who think that that is not an explanation for it, but it is absolutely an explanation. I just don't know if it's the entire explanation for that Interesting.
Speaker 2:I really think that's a really good point. Dr Ripson, I would 100% agree improved screening. And as the diagnostic criteria for autism has changed over the years, it has encompassed a broader range of individuals and more neurodiverse. People who might have been masking their autism symptoms for many years are no longer doing that. But I really liked what Dr Ripson said around the conversation and disagreement.
Speaker 2:The most important thing we could be doing is continuing to have healthy debate around this, because it's that healthy debate that's going to lead us to some real answers as to what that mean, those numbers mean. In the meantime, I can't help but say the challenge for us as a country is to try and figure out how do we maximize the life course outcomes for the autistic population in our country today. So we have a lot of different things we need to do as a country understand why the rates are increasing, really dig into the science behind that and really dig into the science around. What are the best treatments, what are the best services, what are the best supports we can be giving folks so that they have a really healthy outcome and they can be one of those people who have jobs and families and all of those things.
Speaker 1:Let me pick up on Dr Ripson, what you mentioned about increased screenings, because, at least from what I've read the homework that I try to do coming into each and every episode autism prevalence there are myriad factors here. We've got increased screenings, increased awareness, greater access to services, the broader definitions of the disorder. Can we talk about those as well?
Speaker 3:Some are well understood, which is the increase in screening and then also the increase in ability to diagnose.
Speaker 3:So, for example, an individual came to Ohio recently from another state and that state actually said you really couldn't get a diagnosis of autism until you're age six, which is pretty outdated, right, but I've been in medicine for 25 years and we used to say now this has been a long time, but we used to say you don't even think about diagnosing until someone is around four to six years old.
Speaker 3:Now we know we begin diagnosis at begin screenings at 15 to 18 months makes a big, big difference in the population. And then, because of, as Dr Lindgren said, increased awareness of autism, individuals on both ends of the spectrum are going to be better identified with increased awareness. So, individuals with very mild autism and we see girls and young women diagnosed at a lower rate than boys and young men, sometimes because they present a little bit differently. But now, with increased awareness, there's more identification of adolescent girls who had not previously been diagnosed. Then you look at the other end of the spectrum, individuals with profound autism and profound intellectual disability. It can be very hard to tease out whether or not an individual with profound intellectual disability, has autism or not. But with increased awareness some of that's being done and there's some excellent psychologists who really can tease out that difference. And then that makes a difference in how an individual is cared for.
Speaker 2:I 100% agree with what Dr Ripson said and as she was talking I was thinking you know, of course it's the diagnostic challenge, but there's a lot of other psychiatric issues that can present as autism, attention deficit disorder, anxiety. All of these things influence, and you influence, whether or not a person might be diagnosed with autism and you really need a good diagnostician when you have people with complex presentations. And I think as our country becomes better, as practitioners become better at teasing those things out, we do see an increase in the rates of diagnosis, for good reason, because people are able to figure those things out.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about healthcare and health services now, dr Lindgren, what are the challenges in providing care for autistic individuals?
Speaker 2:So the challenge is that the healthcare system has really not been created or is not set up for success for an autistic individual. There are multiple barriers around accessing healthcare. I think even about myself and the challenges I have in accessing healthcare and getting good care. I need to be able to schedule appointments. I need to often be able to use my own portal to get into those appointments. I need to be able to succinctly convey to the doctor what my concerns are. I need to be able to understand instructions. I need to be able to have an examination. I need to be able to wait often for physicians and then I need to be able to carry through those instructions. So at every step of the way, there are really skills that you need to have access to the best healthcare.
Speaker 2:For autistic individuals, particularly the autistic individuals, bankrupt service and I just want to be clear about that there's a wide variety, so this is not true for all autistic individuals, but for the folks we serve who have really significant needs, there's a barrier every step of the way. They may not be able to wait for a doctor, the waiting room might be sensorily overwhelming for them, they may not be able to communicate and they may be afraid when the doctor comes in and not know what to expect and react behaviorally to the examination. You often have a caretaker with them who's trying to manage the behavior at the same time that they're listening to the doctor, so there's a lot of barriers in accessing it, and so setting up healthcare systems and healthcare clinics and healthcare clinics and working with healthcare systems partnering with them Bancroft certainly does that to make the system as welcoming and as high quality as we can really can make a significant difference in the lives of individuals.
Speaker 3:I believe that most individuals in general can be served by a primary care force.
Speaker 3:But Dr Linger makes a really good point is that some individuals and that's sort of the genesis of boundless health right is to address some of those things up front, making sure that wait times are limited, making sure that we really are meeting people where they're at, as they begin and continue through their care. It's really, really important. But the other piece too is that very often with chronic conditions, as doctors we focus on the chronic condition more than we focus on preventive care. So, for example, the rates of colon cancer screening should be just as high with individuals with autism as they are in the general population. There's no reason not to do that, but they're much lower. And part of it is, I think, that there's a concern with caregivers and such that say, I don't want to put my individual through this problem of getting colon cancer screened, having a colonoscopy, for example. But what we try to educate about is but would you rather have them have to address colon cancer, right? So we try to educate the best we can and be flexible with the way we do things.
Speaker 1:And to pick up on what Dr Lindgren said, into how it's practiced for both of you appointments are longer, right for a person who comes in. I also think about another couple of episodes we've done on the dental practice. Here A dental appointment for someone with autism can look drastically different those differences that need to be there understand their environment, and so the office visit can be a really scary environment.
Speaker 3:So we talk a little bit to the parents before the visit, but then we're also extremely flexible during the visit. So, for example, a four-year-old might come in crying just I don't know this environment, I don't understand the environment, and then we will never do anything invasive. We don't have to take the blood pressure of a four or six-year-old. We can, but we don't have to. So we build on what the child is most comfortable with, and oftentimes it's just you know, would you like to get up on this scale? Oh, no, okay, we'll go into the room. Would you like this room?
Speaker 3:We oftentimes will identify a room for an individual so that they're coming back to the same room. And then in my practice I see children. It seems counterintuitive, but I actually see them more often as opposed to less often, because they become more experienced with the environment and they're more comfortable. So then when they do need some invasive procedures, vaccines or have to have their ear looked at, they're more comfortable with the environment. So yeah, we really try to meet every individual in terms of where they're at.
Speaker 1:And we sweat the details, even down to paint colors. Absolutely yeah, that clinical white. I think that people associate with a doctor's office or a hospital room versus coming into a room that may have a light green or light blue color.
Speaker 3:It makes a difference. It really does. Those are really neutral colors and they don't push someone's perceptions one way or the other colors. And they don't push someone's perceptions one way or the other Because, as we know, with autism, individuals have altered sensory perceptions oftentimes. Sometimes they're great, other times more limited, but oftentimes they're experiencing things that we oftentimes don't. They'll see things differently. So it's not to say individuals with autism don't like bright colors, don't like loud noise or music, but we provide a completely neutral environment so that our palate does not have to be their palate. Everything is neutral so they can experience it in the purest form.
Speaker 1:Let me bump up a little bit in age in this respect, because we've also talked about on our podcast series here what's called the services cliff, and that is for young people, especially once they maybe hit high teens or early 20s boy, the services can really drop off. So what does health and wellness look like for aging autistic individuals?
Speaker 2:So I just really love this conversation and I just love listening to you, dr Robson, everything that you're saying. You're singing my songs. You know health and wellness is a lifelong journey, right when none of us say, oh, I'm going to wait till I'm this age and then I'm going to start a health and wellness program. We think about health and wellness and we integrate it into our lives throughout. There are also a lot of challenges around health and wellness for autistic individuals Food availability of varieties of foods and being able to have sensory experiences with those foods. We know that autistic kids might have more restricted eating interests because of food textures or food tastes.
Speaker 2:So being able to be exposed to a wide variety of foods, being able to be exposed and participate in healthy activities, being able to be exposed and participate in healthy activities and as people age, those problems are compounded. So individuals who don't have routines around exercise or around activity have trouble as they age continuing those. And we know what promotes healthy aging. We know it's activity, healthy food, social connection, cognitive stimulation. Those are the things that we all need to age in a healthy way, and we really haven't figured out yet what those look like for autistic individuals, but we know that people should have access to good variety of diets. They should have access to very naturalistic opportunities to exercise and they should have access to social events, things that the community encourages, that embraces them, and that's you know.
Speaker 2:We don't think of medical appointments, by the way, as social activities, but for a lot of autistic individuals that may be a main point of connection. So having a consistent provider who knows them well is also really has other benefits as well. Besides just the comfort level of being able to get the exams done and all those things, it has a lot of social benefits for the person as well. Often, with all of the problems that people with that families are trying to support with their kids with autism, that the health and wellness aspect just goes by the wayside. Families are just drained and they don't have energy to attend to that. So we kind of as a community, have a responsibility to help them figure out. What should that look like? How can they walk down this path? What are easy ways for them to promote in health and wellbeing?
Speaker 1:Dr Ripson, what do we need to be thinking about in terms of the aging autistic community?
Speaker 3:A number of things, but I want to talk a little bit about what Dr Lindgren said about social awareness and being social.
Speaker 3:As we know, a couple years ago it came out that loneliness is a huge issue with everybody right in the United States and I see especially in teenage girls who go from high school where there's kind of an automatic social setting, even if they may not feel very social, if they have autism, but it's automatic and then they leave high school and they don't have an automatic place to develop other relationships and it can be very, very.
Speaker 3:It can be very challenging when there's nothing out there to help and our speech and language pathologists specifically use social skills in that population and if an individual doesn't have access to something like that, which is a lot of what Dr Lindgren is really talking about, is that the access. We have many individuals who can help, but when you don't have access to those services it can be very difficult. But we do use those actively in the population that feels like they've lost their social circle and they don't know how to regain something that helps with them, because that's a really huge part of their life if they cannot make deep connections early on as we start to wrap up our conversation.
Speaker 1:This is flying by, by the way. This is just a fantastic conversation. Let's kind of bookend it and come back to the role of government here. We started talking about health and human services at the federal level, but I've got to believe that the more all governments know at the federal, state and local levels, the better off we'll be in creating more education, more advocacy and more impact. So to both of you, how can government holistically better support the autistic community?
Speaker 2:There is a lot of very, very smart people and a lot of really good research that's being done as we speak, and supporting those individuals and continuing their paths is really critical. The folks who are in this community and who've been doing this work for long periods of time have gotten us pretty far and I don't want to see major changes in how we shift or fund autistic research. So a couple of things I would recommend, I think, staying the course with many of the good researchers who are doing what they're doing, adding some focus on the needs of the most significantly impacted individuals so that they're more represented in research, that autistic individuals have a voice in that research, either for themselves or, if they're not able to have a voice, for their family, to have a voice so that they're able to help direct and shape the needs of that community going forward.
Speaker 3:Much like Dr Ripson started out. The discussion here is very welcome. We just want to make sure that it's not monopolized. Continue the funding we have and perhaps increase it a little more in what we would call translational research, which would mean taking the research we know kind of what we know and moving it into how do we actually care for people? The base research, the basic scientist research, is really important, but translational right now is where people are really. Families are really falling by the wayside.
Speaker 1:Well, and let's be honest too, sometimes our conversations here are heavy, but oftentimes that makes them all the more important, and I would put this conversation in that category as well, for sure. So let's wrap it up this way A little bit of a personal question to both of you what gives you hope, what continues to inspire you with the work that you do?
Speaker 3:Every day I meet individuals who really are committed to caring for individuals with autism in all regards their families, professional staff, and then also I see the research that's going on, so I have a lot of hope.
Speaker 2:You know and thinking about this podcast me and Dr Ripson, seeing what's being done there at Boundless, being able to share what we're doing. This is a true community in every sense of the word. Autistic individuals are a true community. They're linking with and they're talking more to researchers, and everybody involved here is very mission driven. People are motivated to provide the best services, the best quality of life, to incorporate all the voices, and that gives me a lot of hope around what the future could look like for our country for autistic individuals.
Speaker 1:That's a great place to end it. Dr Langren, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Dr Ibsen, good to see you again. Thank you. Yes, you too. Thanks a lot. Thanks to our listeners as well. Don't forget you can be part of episodes to come. You can always email us your questions or comments at podcast at Iamboundlessorg. This is Boundless Abilities brought to you by Boundless Bye.