KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A group of prominent scientists announced the formation of the Independent Autism Coordinating Committee (I-ACC) on March 3, 2026, as an unofficial counterpart to the federal Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee reconstituted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on January 28, 2026. None of the 21 new federal appointees had ever previously served on the committee, and HHS did not reappoint any existing members who were eligible for a second term.
• The federal IACC, originally established under the Children’s Health Act of 2000 and reconstituted as a formal federal advisory committee under the Combating Autism Act of 2006, coordinates approximately $2 billion in annual government autism research funding and presents strategic plans to Congress. Its most recent strategic plan (2021-2023) identified applied behavior analysis as the most commonly practiced behavioral intervention for autism and called for larger randomized controlled trials on ABA outcomes.
• The independent panel includes two former NIMH directors who each previously chaired the federal IACC: Joshua Gordon (director 2016-2024, IACC chair 2016-2024) and Tom Insel (director 2002-2015, IACC chair 2002-2015). It also includes Jim Greenwood, the former Pennsylvania congressman who sponsored autism research legislation that led to the creation of the IACC. The (Independent) I-ACC has scheduled its inaugural meeting for March 19 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C, the same day as the federal IACC’s meeting.
• On March 7, HHS announced the federal IACC’s previously scheduled March 19 meeting had been canceled with no reason given; the I-ACC’s meeting remains on schedule.
• The broader federal autism research environment has grown contested in parallel. In September 2025, the NIH’s Autism Data Science Initiative awarded $50 million to 13 projects focused on genetic and environmental factors; researchers described those selections as scientifically rigorous. Simultaneously, the CDC announced plans to award a no-bid contract to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to investigate a vaccine-autism link, and David Geier, a prominent proponent of the debunked vaccine-autism theory who holds no medical license, was engaged as an HHS contractor to review federal vaccine safety data.

The federal Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) has been a fixture of autism policy since Congress first established it under the Children’s Health Act of 2000 and reconstituted it as a formal federal advisory body under the Combating Autism Act of 2006. For nearly two decades in that latter form, it functioned as the primary mechanism through which the federal government organized its understanding of autism and set priorities for the approximately $2 billion in annual federal autism research funding it helps coordinate.

The committee’s strategic plans, submitted to Congress and updated on a multi-year cycle, have shaped how Medicaid agencies, managed care plans, state health departments, and clinicians have approached coverage and research priorities for autism services, including applied behavior analysis. On January 28, 2026, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replaced the entire non-government membership, appointing 21 new members. None had previously served on the committee.

Thirty-four days later, former IACC members and autism researchers formed their own. They called it the Independent Autism Coordinating Committee—the I-ACC—one hyphen removed from the federal body, a deliberate signal of their intent to shadow it.

Many of the panel’s founders were themselves former federal IACC members who were not reappointed under Kennedy’s January overhaul. They scheduled their inaugural meeting for March 19, the same date as the federal committee’s first public session. Four days later, HHS announced that the federal meeting had been canceled without explanation.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new appointees, according to some scientists who had served on the committee, do not reflect the breadth of the autism research community. Several have publicly promoted the claim that vaccines cause autism, a position that decades of peer-reviewed research has not supported. Joshua Gordon, who directed the National Institute of Mental Health from 2016 to 2024 and chaired the federal IACC throughout that period, was direct: not a single scientist he recognized as an expert in autism research appeared on the new list. Among the appointees are Daniel Rossignol, a family physician known for researching unconventional autism treatments including hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and John Gilmore, the founder of the Autism Action Network, who has publicly attributed his son’s autism to vaccines.

The Autism Science Foundation, in a statement the day of the announcement, said the committee had been “hijacked by a narrow ideological agenda” that does not reflect the autism community or the state of autism science. The Department of Health and Human Services, in its announcement, described the appointments as reflecting Kennedy’s commitment to bringing autism policies into alignment with what it called “gold-standard science.”

A Shadow Structure

Where the federal committee is a statutory body advising the HHS secretary, the I-ACC is organized as an independent volunteer effort explicitly aimed at fulfilling the Autism CARES Act’s own mandate for a coordinated scientific agenda, outside the federal structure.

The independent panel’s founding membership draws heavily from the federal committee’s institutional history. Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation and a three-term veteran of the federal IACC, is a founding member. So are Joshua Gordon and Tom Insel, each a former NIMH director and former IACC chair. Tager-Flusberg, professor emerita at Boston University and director of its Center for Autism Research Excellence and a founder of the Coalition of Autism Scientists, a network of more than 300 researchers in the field, is also on the panel.

Singer, in a statement at the group’s launch, framed the independent committee’s purpose in terms of both continuity and public safety. The I-ACC would develop a research agenda reflecting the progress of autism science and publish annual reports on advances spanning genetics, environmental factors, early detection, therapeutics, and services. The last category encompasses the behavioral interventions that ABA providers deliver. Crucially, the group said it would follow the federal committee’s meeting schedule so it could respond in near-real time to any recommendations it considered unsupported by evidence. The I-ACC is organized as a volunteer effort, with all members serving without compensation and the Autism Science Foundation providing administrative support.

The concern driving the group’s formation extends beyond any single recommendation the federal committee might make. Singer argued that if the federal committee were to direct the government to study whether vaccines cause autism, as if prior research had not settled the question, the signal would reach new parents unfamiliar with those studies. The downstream effect, she said, could be reduced vaccination rates and the return of preventable disease.

A Pattern With Precedent

The overhaul of the IACC fits a broader pattern in the Trump administration of replacing career scientists and institutional veterans on federal advisory bodies with outside voices, a deliberate departure from how such panels have historically been composed. Likewise, the reconstitution of federal advisory panels under Kennedy has not been limited to autism.

As early as April 2025, the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy had launched the Vaccine Integrity Project, an independent initiative to safeguard vaccine science amid concerns about growing threats to the federal vaccine recommendation system. In June 2025, Kennedy replaced the entire membership of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the independent body that advises the CDC on vaccine timing and administration. The American Medical Association has since partnered with the Vaccine Integrity Project to establish a parallel vaccine safety review system.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has also released its own child and adolescent immunization schedule, which differs from the CDC’s guidance. The AAP’s schedule has been endorsed by a coalition of more than 230 medical, public health, parent, and labor organizations and cited by state health officials who have said they are relying on medical society recommendations rather than the restructured federal panels. The CDC, following recommendations from its newly constituted vaccine advisory committee, recently ended its blanket recommendation for hepatitis B vaccination of newborns whose mothers test negative for the virus.

That decision has drawn criticism from mainstream pediatric medicine and vaccine developers.
The I-ACC is the latest instance of this pattern of shadow structures forming in response to the Kennedy-era reconstitution of federal scientific bodies. Whether these parallel groups can maintain influence over the agencies, payers, and state health departments that translate research into coverage policy, or whether they will primarily serve as a reference point for researchers already operating within mainstream science, is an open question. The I-ACC has the credentialed membership and institutional backing to produce rigorous work. Its reach into the policy infrastructure depends on whether that work is taken up by the bodies that act on it.

The Cancellation

On March 7, HHS confirmed that the federal committee’s March 19 meeting had been canceled. Andrew Nixon, the HHS spokesman, offered no explanation. “The IACC will not meet later this month,” he said. “Further information will be shared as available.” At least one newly appointed federal committee member suggested on social media that the group would meet in April instead.

The I-ACC’s meeting remains on schedule. Its inaugural session is set for March 19 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and will be livestreamed with a period for public comment. The federal meeting that the I-ACC was designed to shadow will not be held.

Judith Ursitti, president of Profound Autism Alliance, offered a different read of the cancellation. She said she understood the decision. Scheduling the I-ACC on the same day as the federal committee, and with a nearly identical name, had created confusion within the autism community. Holding both events under those conditions, she said, would have fragmented participation and attention rather than served either body’s purpose.

For ABA providers and the behavioral health industry watching these developments, the cancellation is a data point rather than a resolution. The federal committee’s strategic plan shapes research funding, clinical guidelines, and the legitimacy of specific interventions with Medicaid agencies and managed care plans. A committee that has not yet held a public meeting under its new composition, and whose March session was canceled without explanation, has not yet produced the strategic guidance that could redirect those priorities. The I-ACC is designed to ensure that a credible scientific record is maintained in the interim, and to offer the legislature, regulators, and the public a competing reference point when the federal panel does eventually act.

Ursitti said she plans to engage with both committees. She has followed the federal IACC since its inception and has submitted public comment many times over the years; she intends to continue, because both bodies will take up research and policy questions that bear directly on the future of her son, Jack, and others with profound autism. She cautioned against a reading of the new federal panel as uniformly ideological. “The reality is that the new IACC includes a range of perspectives, including anti-vaccine proponents, but also self-advocates and caregivers whose voices deserve to be heard,” she said.

Her broader concern is less about the topics on the I-ACC’s agenda than about what the moment signals. People with profound autism have been gradually pushed to the margins of the research agenda over time, she said, as attention shifts toward issues that are more visible or newsworthy. The current period, with its competing committees and hardening positions, carries a similar risk. What she hopes to see going forward is less provocative messaging and more deliberate, respectful dialogue. “Every part of the autism community matters,” she said.

Singer’s framing is direct. The question the independent committee is designed to answer is which body, in practice, the field and the families it serves will treat as authoritative. For now, on March 19, only one of them will be in the room.