The purposes of this paper are to provide an overview of the state of the science of sleep in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), present hypotheses for the high prevalence of insomnia in children with ASD, and present a practice pathway for promoting optimal sleep. Approximately two thirds of children with ASD have chronic insomnia, and to date, the strongest evidence on promoting sleep is for sleep education, environmental changes, behavioral interventions, and exogenous melatonin. The Sleep Committee of the Autism Treatment Network (ATN) developed a practice pathway, based on expert consensus, to capture best practices for screening, identification, and treatment for sleep problems in ASD in 2012. An exemplar case is presented to integrate key constructs of the practice pathway and address arousal and sensory dysregulation in a child with ASD and anxiety disorder. This paper concludes with next steps for dissemination of the practice pathway and future directions for research of sleep problems in ASD.

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Children with ASD, especially those with atypical oral sensory sensitivity, are at increased risk for food avoidance behaviors and may require additional support in several feeding domains.

In the United States, black patients are less likely than white patients to receive biologic treatment for their psoriasis. We conducted a qualitative free-listing study to identify patient-generated factors that may explain this apparent racial disparity in psoriasis treatment by comparing the perceptions of biologics and other psoriasis therapies between white and black adults with psoriasis. Participants included 68 white and black adults with moderate to severe psoriasis who had and had not received biologic treatment. Each participant was asked to list words in response to verbal probes querying five psoriasis treatments: self-injectable biologics, infliximab, methotrexate, apremilast, and phototherapy. Salience scores indicating the relative importance of each word were calculated, and salient words were compared across each race/treatment group. Participants who had experience with biologics generally associated positive words with self-injectable biologics. Among biologic-naïve participants, "apprehension," "side effects," and "immune suppression" were most salient. "Unfamiliar" and "dislike needles" were salient only among black participants who were biologic naïve. Participants were generally unfamiliar with the other psoriasis therapies except phototherapy. Unfamiliarity with biologics, particularly among black, biologic-naïve patients, may partly explain the existing racial disparity in biologic treatment for psoriasis and might stem from lack of exposure to or poor understanding of biologics.

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