As an appropriate extension of my 9/28/09 post, "#s in Health," I bring today an interesting perspective of our never-ending pursuit of prevalence measures.

Social network analysis of autism.

A talk given today by Dr. Peter Bearman, PhD, Director, Paul F. Lazarsfed Center for the Social Sciences, Columbia University, brought up fascinating research that being in social contact with autistic children increased the chances of one being diagnosed him/herself as an autistic child.


But this doesn't mean that autism is contagious.

What it gets at is that parents who have autistic children but don't know it, may see other families in similar situations and decide to take their own children for diagnosis.

The diffusion of health information increases autism prevalence (in at least this California population). But not increasing prevalence counts in a bad way, rather, increasing current counts to more accurate representations of the actual prevalence. The best part is, getting the child diagnosed will help families treat and improve the child's and their own well being :)

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Reference: [Liu, K., King, M., & Bearman, P. (2010). Social influence and the autism epidemic. The American Journal of Sociology, 115(5), 1387-1434.]