1. Protect the enacted FY 2026 Autism CARES floor.
Provide that activities authorized by the Autism CARES Act of 2024
and funded in FY 2026 at NIH (including IACC operations), CDC
(including the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring
Network and related surveillance), and HRSA (including LEND and
related autism training and resource programs) continue at not
less than the FY 2026 enacted rate for operations, with no
rescission, transfer, or administrative pause that would interrupt
awards, surveillance sites, training programs, or Committee
operations.
2. Include an anomaly for research start-up under the new Strategic
Plan.
Provide not less than $75 million in additional FY 2027 authority,
available through September 30, 2027, for NIH to begin the research
agenda set out in the Plan, including the National Neurodevelopmental
Regression Initiative (recommended at $57 million in the Plan's FY 2028
architecture) and related work on co-occurring medical conditions,
biomarkers, and precision subgroups. This anomaly should be treated as a
first installment toward it, but not a substitute for the Plan's full
recommended research envelope.
3. Fund the translational engine: the National Autism Precision
Therapeutics Initiative (NAPTI).
The Plan correctly treats translation as infrastructure, not as an
afterthought. NAPTI is designed as a distributed effort built on
existing NIH networks, Autism Centers of Excellence, federal data
assets, and FDA regulatory-science capacity; not as a new institute. The
Plan's planning range is approximately $10-20 million for design and
initial coordination and $75-125 million annually at launch. We request
an anomaly of not less than $20 million in FY 2027 to stand up NAPTI
governance, a coordinating center, common data elements, assay and
reference-methods work, and the first evidence-gated biomarker and
trial-readiness portfolio. Without this seed, discovery will continue to
stall short of clinical products families can use.
4. Fund the communications and accountability platform: Autism.gov and
IACC public reporting.
The Plan calls for Autism.gov as a trusted federal front door;modeled on
cancer.gov and alzheimers.gov; organized around life-stage navigation
(screening, diagnosis, early intervention, school-age services,
transition, adult health and employment, aging), a benefits and
eligibility router, state-by-state service visibility, and an IACC
Implementation Dashboard with quarterly milestones and annual agency
attestations. The Plan also prioritizes communication access for
nonspeaking and minimally speaking autistic people. We request not less
than $8 million in FY 2027, available to the HHS Office of the Secretary
in coordination with GSA/USAGov, NIH, CDC, HRSA, CMS, and the IACC, to
complete governance and content inventory, launch a public beta of
Autism.gov, stand up the Implementation Dashboard, and support IACC
communications, working-group operations, and accessible public
materials. Families should not have to assemble federal help from a
dozen disconnected websites.
5. Direct implementation in report language.
Instruct the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the NIH Director
to (a) treat the adopted 2026-2028 IACC Strategic Plan as the operative
planning document for FY 2027 autism activities; (b) submit the
statutory NIH autism budget estimate pursuant to the Plan no later than
90 days after enactment of the CR or the full-year Act, whichever occurs
first; (c) designate or confirm a National Autism Coordinator with
authority to convene NAPTI participating agencies; (d) report to the
Committees, within 120 days, a 12-month implementation schedule for
NAPTI start-up, the regression initiative, Autism.gov, and
communication-access work; and (e) ensure that research and translation
include individuals with profound autism and complex support needs, who
have been underrepresented in prior federal portfolios.
Do these move you?
Sign on below to support Congressional funding for the 2026 IACC Strategic Plan