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My name is Colin Ohrt. I am a public health physician and research scientist now living in Vietnam for six years. I grew up in Southern Minnesota, USA. While in Tanzania, East Africa as a college student in 1982, I learned millions of children were dying from malaria strains that originated in Cambodia. After all of my medical training, I joined the US Army as it was the only organization effectively addressing malaria at the time. After a career in the US Army developing solutions for this deadly disease, I returned to Southeast Asia in 2014 to continue the fight against malaria.
While working in rural Cambodia, I learned my first child had autism when he was 24 months of age. Around the same time, I observed an unusual clustering of autism symptoms in six children of family and friends. The only two common exposures for all these children are excess screen time and air pollution. My youngest son is at high risk for autism because of his family history. We have done everything in our power to lessen the severity of the disorder if he has it. He is now 22 months of age and looks great. I spent the last 2.5 years understanding how to best help my sons and other children at risk for or with symptoms of autism. We now want to widely share what we have learned.
I currently live in Hanoi, Vietnam with my beautiful wife and our two wonderful sons. I am the Founding Director of the Consortium for Health Action, a Minnesota-based 501(c)3 non-profit organization.
This blog’s purpose is to facilitate improvement in the lives of children and their families. Our initial focus is on the potential adverse effects from excessive screen time exposure at a young age and how its reduction/removal will reverse the symptoms. There are currently at least 3 million preschool children with autism worldwide who are in need of early intervention. Most will never receive it. I suspect that three achievable solutions for these children will make a big difference: 1) screen time limits, 2) effective parent training on specific and researched techniques, 3) targeted teacher training on autism-specific, evidence-based teaching strategies. We have implemented these and more for our first son. It appears that he is on track to be in the “optimal outcome” group of children who lose their diagnosis and become indistinguishable from typically developing peers.
Moreover, I believe that it is possible that a some autism cases (of unknown cause) can be prevented. We implemented a package of interventions correcting known and suspected risk factors with my second son. We also taught and tracked his developmental milestone since birth and were prepared to “act early.” We want to conduct objective research on how effective the approach we used may prove to be.
In this blog, I will share information about what we have done for our family and what Health-Action is planning to do to help many more. I will also answer select questions from followers and seek expert input when needed.
We seek partners and volunteers to:
1. Document that autism can be ameliorated or prevented with worldwide outreach possible
2. Autism can be more effectively treated in all settings
3. Translation of the US CDC Act Early app into other languages
4. Enroll families into case series for autism severity reduction and prevention
We call on professional societies, the media, non-profits, researchers, donors, autism professionals, parents and global partners to join us in our “Call to Action for the Prevention and Treatment of Autism.” If you may be interested, please contact me at colin@health-action.org.
Colin Ohrt, MD, MPH
Founding Director, Consortium for Health Action
Website https://www.health-action.org/
Vietnam Mobile +8476 9092 856
Email Colin@Health-Action.org
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