Hispanic, Black children screened for autism up to two years later than white peers in Georgia

215 points by universityofga 8 hours ago on reddit | 25 comments

Beautiful_Garage7797 | 5 hours ago

incredibly shocking: Poorer demographics have less consistent access to healthcare, revealing that poverty may be correlated with less healthcare access

Relevant_Eye1333 | 7 hours ago

i work with cases in another southern state and i can tell you the same happens, they start ABA services at 5-6 years old, very late to get the most meaningful changes.

ScientistFit6451 | 2 hours ago

ABA hasn't been shown to consistently improve long-term outcomes and the Autism screening tool itself widely used in the USA is known for high false-positive rates.

Relevant_Eye1333 | an hour ago

you care to provide a peer reviewed article? i got a bunch of kids that are talking, behaviors reduced or at zero, and they're learning daily living skills that say otherwise, on top of decades of peer reviewed articles and meta analysis.

ScientistFit6451 | an hour ago

So, what exactly is the point with the clearly non-sensical "can't cure" but also cure autism narrative? If the kids don't act autistic, how do they still have autism?

BabyLegsOShanahan | 7 hours ago

Racism has held medicine and treatment back over and over again. Instead they'd rather put out millions of articles claiming everyone is naturally less intelligent than white people. It's 2026.

MazdaProphet | 5 hours ago

Research suggests that socioeconomic status, rather than race, plays a significant role in the number of words spoken to children. A study by Hart and Risley found that by age 3, children from professional families had a vocabulary of 1,116 words, compared to 525 words for children from welfare-dependent families. This translates to approximately 30 million fewer words spoken to children from lower-income backgrounds ¹ ².

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_gap

https://educationalevidence.com/en/we-must-not-resign-ourselves-to-the-idea-that-a-childs-background-dictates-their-future/

Since many kids come in with a huge deficit they are simply monitored longer

Never attribute to grand conspiracies about the entire system being racist - to simply bad/neglectful parenting.

BabyLegsOShanahan | 3 hours ago

It isn't a conspiracy. I studied racial disparities in health care and education for 5 years - guess what? Being rich doesn't shield you from racist beliefs imposed upon you.

For example: Babies born to Black, college educated mothers have a higher mortality rate than babies born to white women who haven't graduated high school.

Socioeconomic status can be controlled for and racism still exists and impacts learning outcomes as well as health outcomes. Why are Black and Hispanic people on the lower end of earning and wealth? Racism. Or do you think that white people are innately smarter and healthier?

Mother_Patience_6251 | 5 hours ago

I agree with this research however i believe both can be true at once. Medical racism is definitely a thing.

MazdaProphet | 4 hours ago

What’s medical racism?

BabyLegsOShanahan | an hour ago

Google racial disparities in health care.

Black people don't feel the same pain as white people. We actually mimic white people's response to pain. It's science.

MazdaProphet | an hour ago

> Black people don't feel the same pain as white people.

Skin color means people experience pain differently?

> We actually mimic white people's response to pain.

Did you just contridct the last sentence ?

I’m so confused

BabyLegsOShanahan | an hour ago

J. Marion Sims performed experiments on Black women. He has been called the father of gynecology. He wouldn't use anesthetics on Black women because Black women don't feel pain. Their screams from the pain were just them mimicking white women.

You can read his assistant's notes as well as his own.

You should read Medical Apartheid.

MazdaProphet | an hour ago

Ok I looked him up

He died in 1883

This conversation is about today

BabyLegsOShanahan | an hour ago

It's so odd when people can't take the events of yesterday and apply them.

mumofBuddy | 29 minutes ago

So a present day example of impact systemic bias/racism in the medical field would be the disparity that we see in care like the fact that (in the US) black patients are likely to receive less pain management care than their white counterparts-in part due to myths like black people have higher pain tolerance that persist today.

Even when you control for socioeconomic factors and education, systemic bias has been a significant contributor to the disproportionately high black maternal mortality rate in the US, which is considered a public health crisis at this point.

These are just two examples but they are not the only ones and black people are not the only group negatively impacted by bias in medicine.

Real-Olive-4624 | an hour ago

Just wanna clarify that the "black women don't feel pain" is not your beliefs based on the information we have, but rather what some medical professionals did/do believe, right?

BabyLegsOShanahan | an hour ago

Yes. Sorry, I knew I worded it weird.

TheCheshireCody | 5 minutes ago

They're relating scientific nonsense that has been claimed about Black people and which doctors in some areas still repeat. Here's another one: until 2021 the NFL had an official policy that Black players started with lower cognitive functions than White players, so Black players had a harder time showing and proving brain damage caused by playing the game.

Effective-One6527 | an hour ago

The word gap hypothesis is hotly debated by linguists. Because the study disregarded any interaction that was not parent to one child and in home. Their was also a significant observation effect that affected the lower income households more

imnota4 | 2 hours ago

What's a Georgia?

Jorping | an hour ago

It is highly unlikely that melanin keeps autism at bay.

But I am always open to being proven wrong.

Fun-Pickle-9821 | 4 hours ago

Racism? Against minorities? In...the USA?

Appreciate this reporting, next you'll tell me there's misogyny too. Yeah, that'll be the day.