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IMFAR: Now With More Autistic Priorities! TPGA’s 2017 Conference Report

Shannon Des Roches Rosa  Senior Editor, TPGA Welcome to IMFAR 2017! [image: three white autistic folks: Corina Becker, Steven Kapp, & Carol Greenburg, posing by the “Welcome to IMFAR 2017” sign.] We have been reporting from IMFAR, the annual International Meeting for Autism Research, since 2011. This year we provided general live coverage via Twitter, with select roundups including the Press Conference, and highlights from sessions such as Autism and Aging, Understanding Barriers to Autism Diagnoses for Children from Racial/Ethnic Minority Groups in the U.S., Mental Health Crises in Autistic Youth, and Autism and Sexuality. We also co-hosted the #AutIMFAR chat with autistic and autism research community members. While the research presented at IMFAR continues to be varied in scope, and is still too disproportionately skewed towards prenatal, infant, and early childhood findings, our takeaway is that the 2017 meeting in San Francisco had the biggest increase in neurodiversity-oriented content and attendees we’ve seen so far.…