Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #101949

Michael L. Ganz, MS, PhD, Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Kresge 615, Boston, MA 02115, 617-432-2383, mganz@hsph.harvard.edu

Autism is an expensive disorder resulting in large financial and non-financial burdens for families and society. Considerable resources are used to treat and support people with autism and to support ongoing research to understand the disorder. In addition, individuals with autism and their families may experience lost productivity and reduced quality of life. Since expenditures for caring for and supporting people with autism and their families have grown at a rapid pace over the past decades, it is important to understand how those resources are spent. Given the burdens we face and given more options for treatment and possibly for prevention, society will have to make important decisions about the allocation of scarce medical resources. However, not much is currently known at all about the costs of autism in the United States. This paper will present estimates of the lifetime and total annual costs of autism. These estimates were constructed by obtaining estimates for various components of care from available published sources and from original analyses using the National Health Interview Surveys and the Medical Expenditure Panels Surveys, combined with standard cost of illness methods. Our best estimate is that the lifetime cost of autism is at least $3.9 million dollars per person per year. Combined with an estimated prevalence of autism of 27.5 per 10,000 persons, the total societal cost is at least $43 billion per year to care for individuals with autism over their lifetimes in direct medical, direct non-medical, and lost productivity costs.

Learning Objectives:

• At the conclusion of the session, the participant (learner) in this session will have learned about the cost-of-illness method as applied to estimating the cost of autism in the United States.

Keywords: Adult and Child Mental Health, Cost Issues

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.