Mary Holland’s Comments at IACC Meeting
Mary Holland, EBCALA’s Board Chair, offered public comment at the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) meeting on July 10th. This first full committee meeting since the Combatting Autism Act of 2011 was passed welcomed new members to the committee and was attended by several high ranking government officials including: Sectretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius; Congressman Mike Doyle; Congressman Chris Smith; Kareem Dale, Associate Director White House Office of Public Engagement & Special Assistant to the President for Disability Policy; Michael Strautmanis, Deputy Assistant to the President and Counselor for Strategic Engagement to the Senior Advisor; Alexa Posny, Assistant Secretary of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services
U.S. Department of Education; and Francis Collins, Director National Institutes of Health.
For those unfamiliar with the IACC, their homepage offers an excellent description of the committee and its duties.
The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) is a Federal advisory committee that coordinates all efforts within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) concerning autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Through its inclusion of both Federal and public members, the IACC helps to ensure that a wide range of ideas and perspectives are represented and discussed in a public forum.
The IACC mission is to:
- Provide advice to the Secretary of Health and Human Services regarding Federal activities related to autism spectrum disorder.
- Facilitate the exchange of information on and coordination of ASD activities among the member agencies and organizations.
- Increase public understanding of the member agencies’ activities, programs, policies, and research by providing a public forum for discussions related to ASD research and services.
IACC meetings are open to the public and include presentations and discussions on a variety of topics, including activities and projects of the IACC, recent advances in science and autism policy issues. A portion of each meeting is reserved for public comment.
Watch Mary deliver her comments to the IACC (transcript available also):
