Autism PSP: End of 2016 review

In May 2016, the Autism PSP published its Top 10. With the help of members of the Steering Group and other partners, the PSP had gathered 3,331 questions from the 1,213 patients, carers and health professionals who took part in the original survey.

After sorting, grouping and checking current research evidence to see which questions had been answered fully by research already, the PSP had a list of 89 unanswered questions. The 40 most frequently submitted questions went forward to interim prioritisation. In April 2016 the top 25 questions from that exercise were discussed and prioritised into a Top 10, at a workshop with equal numbers of autistic adults and young people, parents and professionals.

Since then, Autistica, the charity which initiated the PSP, has been putting plans in place to address some of the priorities and working hard to promote the Top 10 to other research funders.

Rebecca Sterry, Autistica’s Communications Manager, has recently written an update on progress against each of the Top 10 priorities for research. Rebecca said:

“Potential funders and existing donors have been incredibly receptive to this universal agreement of priorities. This has allowed us to make great progress in addressing each one of the ten questions. Some research projects have already launched, and others are in the pipeline or being taken on by other organisations. The full list will also form the basis of our next UK-wide project – a national strategy for autism research.”

The final report from the Autism PSP (.PDF) goes into detail about the background to each of the Top 10 priorities, explaining the issue, what we already know about each area and how future research can help.