Your Comments Needed for July 31 IACC Meeting

Your comments empower us.

The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee has posted a draft Strategic Plan for public review and comment. The Strategic Plan will be discussed at the next IACC meeting scheduled for Friday, July 31. The plan was posted online yesterday, July 17, 2026 - . Comments are due by July 24, 2026 Email comments to: IACCPublicInquiries@mail.nih.gov

My experience of being on this committee since January has been a bit of a roller coaster ride. I had expected to have an “us and them experience” with “us” being the 21 public members likely being at odds with “them” the federal members from the various agencies having a few more seats than us. What I'm seeing is our side working together really well, as a unified group, with a common understanding of what autism is, to put out some great material “to meet the needs of individuals with autism spectrum disorder or other developmental disabilities and their families”, and several people who I thought would be opponents actually agreeing with and voting for our initiatives. There still remains few of “them,” most notably several federal members who voted against the initiative for the federal government to focus on programs that prevent elopement and drowning of children. Because who in their right mind would vote against a measure to keep people with autism alive, especially the most vulnerable children, right? But some did.

But clearly we have some of the federal members who actually care about our kids/adults, God bless them, as they have voted so that we have won everything we've asked for thus far.

If you watch the meetings in their entirety, it becomes obvious who is there to obstruct and delay the committee's work, and who is enthusiastic about serving our families, and giving people with autism a better day. I would love to talk about the insane shenanigans I see going on behind the scenes, but I want this committee to have the best chance of getting on its feet and doing the good work that needs to be done. So I'm going to be patient and continue to extend an olive branch to those who would like to leave the dark side.

In the mean time we really need you to send comments to every meeting. If you don't have anything new to say resend your old messages if they're still relevant. I can tell you that there are federal members who don't seem like they have read any of the comments that have been submitted, so just because you've written it before doesn't mean you can't write it over and over again so that every time we have a meeting they are hearing the loud voice of the public asking for exactly what we want. Your comments give your friendlies on the committee power that we need to change the future of autism, and end the decades long status quo . Be patient with us as there are still active obstructionist trying to slow down this process or stop it altogether. We're trying to move forward as quickly and as wisely as we can. This isn't a process where we have the majority and so we are still having to fight pretty hard. Attacks from the “deep state”, which I am now calling the “silly state”, are ongoing. And are increasingly absurd. You really should be watching these public meetings.