School-Clinic Collaboration to Improve Equitable and Efficient Autism Identification

Autism evaluation processes are often fragmented and lead to delays in accurate identification and services. These inefficient processes also lead to substantial burden on families when navigating the autism diagnostic odyssey that often requires information-sharing across providers and settings. Collaboration across schools, clinical settings, and communities can facilitate equitable and efficient access to autism evaluation services. Children and families from minoritized and marginalized backgrounds are particularly positioned to benefit from school-clinic collaboration. This paper (1) highlights the current state of autism identification and systems inefficiencies and inequities along racial/ethnic/socioeconomic lines, (2) compares the processes, benefits, and challenges between educational identification and clinical diagnosis of autism, (3) describes how school-clinic collaboration processes can address these systems inefficiencies and inequities, (4) presents examples of models that use school-clinic collaboration, and (5) offers specific recommendations for providers.