Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his department's report investigating an increase in autism rates will be released next month.
"We have will announcements as promised in September, finding interventions, certain interventions now that are clearly or almost certainly causing autism. We're going to be able to address those in September," he said.
Kennedy has said he expected to have a report by the fall, but earlier this year, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told CBS News that it will take longer for research to be completed.
The number of autism diagnoses in the U.S. has increased in recent years, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that found that 1 in 31 children born in 2014 were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. A previous CDC report indicated that among children born in 2012, 1 out of 36 had been identified with autism spectrum disorder by age 8. Among children born in 1992, that proportion was 1 in 150, according to the CDC.
No one knows why autism rates have spiked in the past 25 years, but scientists think much of it is due to a broader definition of the disorder and better detection. They also say genetics and exposure to chemicals may play a role.
"We're seeing the rates of autism go up because we're doing a better job of understanding what autism is," Dr. Jessica McCarthy, a licensed clinical psychologist, previously told Scripps News. "We're doing a better job of assessing it and diagnosing it in greater areas around the country, both in terms of targeted areas of the country and also in populations that we know are chronically underserved in healthcare."
Kennedy, however, disputed a CDC report's conclusions that enhanced screenings are behind the increase.
"One of the things that I think we need to move away from today is this ideology that the autism diagnosis, that the autism prevalence increases, the relentless increases, are simply artifacts of better diagnosis, better recognition, or changing diagnostic criteria," he said.
While Kennedy has expressed skepticism over vaccines, he insisted in an interview with Fox News on Thursday that there are many causes.
"This is a crisis, there is not a single cause, there are many, aggregation of causes. We are now developing sufficient evidence to ask for regulatory action on some of those or recommendations," he said.
Kennedy's announcement comes as the Trump administration has announced it has fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Susan Monarez.
