About

The Health Professions Autism Network is a multidisciplinary Community of Practice for core healthcare providers in all settings and across the lifespan, to facilitate networking, education, and advocacy on caring for autistic individuals and families. As all healthcare professionals will have opportunity in their career to care for individuals on the spectrum (or those with traits who may be undiagnosed), our target audience is those who do not specialize in autism care. Experts are certainly welcome to join us!

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Participation in the community is voluntary, and open to all healthcare providers.  Visiting/joining our community gives you access to resources, forum conversations, and related blog posts.

The goal of the community is to improve access to quality healthcare to decrease health disparities in the autistic community.

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Community charter: Version 1.0 3/1/17

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We welcome:

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• Advanced Practice RNs

• Physician Assistants

• Registered Nurses

• Licensed Practical Nurses

• Nursing/Medical/ Home Health Assistants

• Physicians

• Dentists

• Dental hygienists

• Pharmacists

• Paramedics/ Emergency Medical Technicians

• Doulas

• Students of all the health professions

• and many others!

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This community was initially established as a doctoral project through Minnesota State University, Mankato, School of Nursing, with the support of the Autism Society of Minnesota.  The project used the principles of Community Based Participatory Research and defense of the project is expected in late summer/early fall 2017.

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Start up funding for this project was provided through the Becky Taylor Fellowship from the Glen Taylor Nursing Institute for Family and Society.

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**NOTE: There is wide disagreement about whether "person with autism" or "autistic person" is the more preferred or respectful way to refer to someone on the autism spectrum. The Community Leader believes that with neurodiversity comes diversity of thought, and every autistic individual has the right to determine how s/he prefers to be called. Many, especially autistic adults, prefer identity-first language. Please respect this right and try to match the patient/family language whenever possible. Community leaders will use their own preferences, or the less controversial “person on the spectrum” language whenever possible.