NSS Weekly: Working Toward More Culturally Responsive Autism Services

Transcript

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INTRO: You are listening to North Star Stories: Voices from Where We Live, a newscast about what it means to live in Minnesota, produced by AMPERS, with support from the McKnight Foundation and the State of Minnesota.

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HOST: This is North Star Stories: Voices from Where We Live. I'm Chantel SinGs.

This week, as the state is back in the national headlines over fraud investigations, we take a look at the efforts of some organizations that are providing immigrant communities access to autism related services in a more inclusive and culturally responsive way. We'll also take a deep dive into where plastic residues show up in our daily lives.

But first, a fake nude image could soon carry a very real price tag in Minnesota. The Minnesota House passed a bill targeting so-called "nudification" technology, artificial intelligence tools that can make a person in a photo or video appear naked. The bill doesn't criminalize users directly. Instead, it goes after the websites and apps where people can create the images and bans them from offering the applications in Minnesota. Bill author Representative Jessica Hanson says the damage caused by non-consensual fake nude images can be devastating.

REP. JESSCA HANSON: Women's lives are being ruined, sometimes by strangers and oftentimes by men they trusted for decades. This is a serious issue.

HOST: The bill would allow victims to sue for damages and the attorney general could seek civil penalties of up to $500,000 dollars. The bill passed with broad support.

Minnesota's lawmakers say crypto kiosks are making it too easy for scammers. The machines work like an Automated Teller Machine, or ATM, but convert cash to virtual cryptocurrency. A new bill would ban any new kiosks starting in August and give operators until the end of the year to remove existing machines. Representative Tim O'Driscoll says they're often used in scams.

REP. TIM O'DRISCOLL: Grandma, I need you to go down to the blank blank store and go to the crypto machine, and I need you to put money, and I need you to put this code in to be able to wire that money to me so that I can get home.

HOST: The bill just bans the machines, not cryptocurrency itself.

And while lawmakers aim at crypto ATMs, authorities in northern Minnesota say they've arrested a suspect in a different type of ATM scam. A twenty-one-year-old was in court for his alleged role in an Iron Range ATM "jackpotting" case. That's when someone breaks into or hacks an ATM and makes it spit out cash. Prosecutors say he stole more than $33,000 dollars from an ATM in Mountain Iron earlier this year. Investigators say they tracked and arrested him using video surveillance and cell phone data.

A historic marker is coming to Pine City, a rural community located about one hour north of Minneapolis, where one of the nation's first rural LGBTQIA2S+ pride movements began more than two decades ago. Local advocates will dedicate the marker in Voyager Park, the site of East Central Minnesota's official first Pride celebration. Organizers say the monument will be the state's first LGBTQIA2S+ marker listed in Minnesota's historical registry. The project received funding from the Minnesota Historical Society and the state Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

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This week, federal agents raided 20 daycare centers in the state as part of investigations into alleged welfare fraud. The raids follow the fallout from a December YouTube video in which an influencer visited federally supported childcare centers owned by Somali community members around Minneapolis and suggested they were taking taxpayer money without providing services. But despite the negative attention, more Minnesota organizations are working to support children with autism and developmental disabilities in culturally responsive ways. Reporter Faaya Adem spoke with two groups creating more inclusive spaces and helping fill gaps in care and access.

FAAYA ADEM: For many families in Minnesota, finding autism services that feel both accessible and culturally understanding can be a challenge. Najma Omar, an occupational therapist, and her sister Nafis Omar, a registered nurse, are working to change that together. The sisters opened Submerge in Sensory, a therapy center in St Paul.

NAJMA OMAR: We recently opened this center at this location, I would say, about four months ago. So we're still pretty new.

FAAYA ADEM: Their mission is deeply personal. Nafis says growing up with three siblings on the autism spectrum shaped how they understand care. Autism Spectrum Disorder is a condition related to brain development that affects how people see others and socialize with them.

NAFIS OMAR: We come from a household where the spectrum is vast. So we experience different parts of the spectrum at home. We know what it's like to have a verbal kid that's on the spectrum, but with like other disparities. And then we have kids that are not verbal, but like, excel in different ways. So we're able to provide compassion right alongside with the clinical expertise that we're able to provide at the center that we have.

FAAYA ADEM: Nafis says it's often difficult for parents of children with autism to find providers within this specific cultural community, especially for those in the Somali community. She says a lack of shared languages and understanding of different cultural values can make accessing support feel unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

NAFIS OMAR: We have a cultural background, and we're able to understand and provide more towards a certain demographic of people, in terms of language barriers, in terms of, like, cultural barriers. But you know, like we grew up in Minnesota, so we're Minnesotan as can be. So we're here to serve all Minnesotans.

FAAYA ADEM: In the past few months, the Somali community has been facing national scrutiny and harmful rhetoric.

NAT SOUND – PRESIDENT TRUMP: How about in Minnesota? They come from Somalia. They go to Minnesota, and they stole $19 billion. And their low IQ.

FAAYA ADEM: Despite this, Najma says community support has kept them going even during those difficult moments.

NAJMA OMAR: It's been hard as business owners, too, and as people of color and as Somali specifically. As you know, like the craziness that's been happening the last couple of months in regards to our culture and the degrading comments from the President and from Congress and from other people who support them, it's been hard really seeing ourselves even wanted In this community, but it's amazing to see the amount of people who support us.

FAAYA ADEM: Cultural representation is only one of the factors organizations are facing. Research shows that outdoor activities can serve as valuable therapy for children with autism. But access to these spaces also comes with serious risk. Children with autism are 160 times more likely to die from drowning than the general pediatric population. Mushtaq Mohamed and Nasteho Nur co-founded Guided Hope Swim, a new organization focused on teaching swim lessons and water safety for children with autism as well as other developmental disabilities.

MUSHTAQ MOHAMED: Our program is designed to be structured and individualized for each of these children's unique needs, while also creating a safe and supportive learning environment. We also hope to provide parent education, which is like so important for us to for to help these parents and families feel informed, supportive, supported and confident in reinforcing these skills. Also outside of these sessions.

FAAYA ADEM: Nasteho Nur says the idea came from their backgrounds as behavioral therapists and noticing a major gap in accessible swim programs.

NASTEHO NUR: While working with the clients, we also noticed that there was also not necessarily the information that they needed to be provided as well. And when we would speak to the parents, we would do research on these resources for the water safety programs. They were not accessible or culturally responsive, or affordable or accessible to our community as well.

FAAYA ADEM: Nasteho came to that realization during a session.

NASTEHO NUR: I had taken them out on an outdoor session, and during that session, and it wasn't one of our first sessions, we've been having outdoor sessions for a while.

FAAYA ADEM: But children with autism often struggle with wandering.

NASTEHO NUR: Me and the client's parent, we looked away for one second, and within that split second, the client was already running towards a body of water.

FAAYA ADEM: The situation was key to the work the organization is doing today.

NASTEHO NUR: And in that moment, like the terrifying feeling that me and her mom felt that we weren't going to be able to get to her if something happened, God forbid, that really made me like think a lot that night.

FAAYA ADEM: For many families, language barriers are an additional challenge. Mushtaq Mohamed says they've seen how important shared language is when building trust between parents and providers.

MUSHTAQ MOHAMED: If you do not speak the parents' language, there's no way that the parents are able to trust you, but also be able to like, trust you with their kids too, especially in water.

FAAYA ADEM: Nasteho Nur says their long-term goal is to expand access and reduce drowning risk across communities.

NASTEHO NUR: We also really hope that there are more programs that are born from this, because there are a lot of children who need this. There's a huge gap. It does need a lot of resources as well. So we want this to become bigger than just our small foundation.

FAAYA ADEM: For North Star Stories, I'm Faaya Adem.

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HOST: The increase in Autism research is resulting in more children being identified than ever before. Not only in the Somali or immigrant communities. New data from the University of Minnesota's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network shows that about three percent of 8-year-old children in parts of Anoka, Hennepin, and Ramsey counties have autism. To understand more about how organizations are helping families and individuals make informed decisions and support children with autism, we're joined now by Kelsea Schneider, the Southern Regional Clinical Director of Minnesota Autism Center, or MAC Midwest, and Alexis Daggett, Chief Development Officer. MAC Midwest is a nonprofit provider of coordinated neurodevelopmental care serving children, adolescents and adults across Minnesota. Thank you both for joining us. How are you?

KELSEA SCHNEIDER: Very good. Thank you for having us.

HOST: Let's start with you, Kelsea. We mentioned the study about the number of children with autism in Anoka, Hennepin and Ramsey Counties. Are the numbers also high in the rest of the state?

KELSEA SCHNEIDER: Yes, I believe that they are. Those counties might be highlighted just because they're closer, kind of to the metro area, so probably more opportunity for testing. But we are working on being able to provide testing in other areas of the state as well, in order to help families figure out what diagnosis might be appropriate for their child in order to access services that they need.

HOST: Alexis, how are the fraud investigations in Minnesota and the withdrawal of federal funds, how is that hurting autism programs in the state?

ALEXIS DAGIT: As a provider of autism services, we wholeheartedly do not want fraud to be in here, because it just impacts the families that we serve. And so there is no excuse for fraud, waste and abuse, but there are a tremendous amount of really good, trustworthy autism providers out here serving families who need help. When the state governments and federal governments start withholding funding, they're hurting the children who need this medically necessary treatment, and they're hurting families that don't have other options. The children that we treat at MAC Midwest, these are children who mostly can't go to schools. They are referred to us because they can't be in a school program. They need a center, our ABA, a compassionate program that we're able to offer. So of course, we don't want the fraud, waste and abuse, but we want to be able to provide the services that these families need.

HOST: And for you, Kelsea, how do stereotypes about autism affect diagnosis and support, especially for immigrants and people of color?

KELSEA SCHNEIDER: The first thing I thought of too, when you mentioned that is there are some differences and kind of stereotypes between males and females diagnosed with autism as well. I mean, I think that that's something that we're getting better at identifying. Like for females, it might look a little bit different at times. They may be diagnosed with like anxiety and ADHD more so and missing, kind of, like the autism piece, because it can look a little bit different. And I think too, just making sure, you know, especially in immigrant communities, that there's trust and connection between us as providers in these communities in order for them to be comfortable with seeking out assessment and resources. So that's something that's really important to us at MAC as well.

HOST: And Alexis, what resources are out there to help families with children or adults with autism?

ALEXIS DAGIT: If you're a family that has a child with autism or any sort of neurodevelopmental disability, Minnesota is actually a pretty great state to live in. People move to Minnesota because of the resources that we have available. MAC Midwest being one of them. At MAC, we offer assessments and evaluations, so starting at age 18 months, all the way up to 21 years for our in center, ABA programs. But you can start getting Assessments and Evaluations starting at that 18 months. But in addition to MAC, there are so many other wonderful organizations, AUSM, which is the Autism Society of Minnesota, is available and has wonderful resources available on their website. PACER also comes to mind as another organization that you can go and find tremendous amount of websites. Even the Department of Health and Human Services, DHS, on their website, has so much about autism and where you can find additional resources and look to your own communities and or school districts. You'll be surprised how many of the counties have additional resources or availability for sensory supports, or things that they're offering in terms of adaptive swim lessons that you could register for that might even be free, or, you know, a reduced cost to you.

KELSEA SCHNEIDER: Yeah, Alexis, I'm so happy you brought up Autism Society of Minnesota because I was just looking at their website today, and they have tons of events coming up, like almost every day or at least every week, which is a pretty cool thing for people to access.

HOST: Thank you, Kelsea, thank you Alexis. We appreciate your time.

KELSEA SCHNEIDER: Thank you so much. Thanks.

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HOST: Plastics can be found in every aspect of our lives, but what about our bodies and our food? After the break, we look deeply at the many surprising places microplastics can be found. This is North Star Stories: Voices from Where We Live, produced by AMPERS with support from the McKnight Foundation and the State of Minnesota. We'll be right back.

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HOST: You are listening to North Star Stories, I'm Chantel SinGs.

In other news from across the state, a bill that would turn disability access requests into a required conversation is one step closer to becoming law. The Minnesota with Disabilities Act would require schools, landlords, businesses, and employers to at least discuss requests for reasonable accommodations from people with disabilities. Bill author Senator Erin Maye Quade says the bill doesn't automatically grant every request but requires a conversation.

SEN. MAYE QUADE: There has to be an engagement in the process to discuss accommodations.

HOST: A recent survey found 74% of workers who asked for accommodations had at least one request denied. Opponents warned the bill's language could be too broad. Senator Torrey Westrom, the first blind individual elected to the legislature, voted in favor of the bill but worries it will prompt frivolous lawsuits.

SEN. TORREY WESTROM: I just want to make sure it's not a process that we're setting up that somehow can weaponize what are good intentions.

HOST: The bill passed with bipartisan support but still has to pass in the House.

Minnesota has named its first Youth Poet Laureate. Seventeen-year-old Sienna Lee of Moorhead, in the western part of the state, will serve a one-year term as a public ambassador for poetry, appearing at events across the state and taking part in national youth
poetry gatherings.

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HOST: The plastic revolution introduced fossil fuel-based products into almost every aspect of modern life. But now, scientists are increasingly warning about what happens after those products break down. Tiny plastic particles, many of them invisible to the naked eye, are drawing new attention from environmentalists, health experts, and federal regulators. Reporter Britt Aamodt has more.

BRITT AAMODT: If you eat or drink anything during the day or even breathe, you're most likely ingesting microplastics. Studies show most people ingest about 50 to 100,000 plastic particles a year. But what does that really mean?

MELISSA MAURER-JONES:
There's some evidence that it's locating all over in our bodies or other organisms, and we're still trying to understand what might be happening. There's some speculation that it might be related to some inflammatory responses.

BRITT AAMODT:
Melissa Mauer Jones is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Minnesota Duluth. She researches microplastics.

MELISSA A. MAURER-JONES: There's some speculation or some evidence that it might be changing the behavior of some of the tissues that it lands in, just by simple proxy of having this human-made substance in our system.

BRITT AAMODT: This year, the federal government launched a multi-million-dollar program that aims to standardize measurement of microplastics in the body and assess their impact on health. A recent documentary Plastic Detox looked at the connection between microplastics and male infertility.

NAT SOUND – PLASTIC DETOX: …to look at the effect of lowering your exposure to plastics and chemicals in plastic on your fertility.

BRITT AAMOD: But Melissa Maurer-Jones cautions that research on microplastics and human health still has a long way to go.

MELISSA A. MAURER-JONES: We're still unraveling what are the toxic responses actually happening because of this.

BRITT AAMODT: What we do know is what microplastics are, in a general sense.

MARY KOSUTH: Tiny little particles of plastic derived or made from fossil fuels. They have to be technically less than five millimeters in order to be considered microplastic, but they can get very small.

BRITT AAMODT: Mary Kosuth is an environmental researcher at the University of Minnesota. She says Minnesota is not immune to the problem. A 2025 study by the Environment Minnesota Research and Policy Center looked at 40 Minnesota waterways and found microplastics in every one. It's not surprising, given how much plastic humans produce.

MARY KOSUTH: In 2023, there were something like 414 million metric tons of plastic, equivalent in weight to 69 Great Pyramids of Giza. So that's in a single year. And then the following year, we created 431 million metric tons of plastic, another 72 great pyramids of Giza. And we have this 11 billion metric tons of legacy plastics on Earth.

BRITT AAMODT: Plastics, depending on the type, can take tens and hundreds of years to break down. And as they do, they release microplastics, as well as other additives used in creating plastic, into the soil, water and air. But this isn't the only source.

MARY KOSUTH: Another common misunderstanding, I think, with microplastics, is that they only come from plastics that are breaking down in the environment. Microplastics are actually released during the manufacturing process, during the transportation process. They can also be released during product use.

BRITT AAMODT: Microplastics have been found, among other places, in toothpaste, dental floss, carbonated beverages, tea bags, canned goods and take-out food containers. The National Institutes of Health reported that disposable plastic water bottles contain over 200,000 plastic particles per liter of water. Consumers concerned about contamination have switched to reusable plastic water bottles. But are they safer? Then there's the question about the water that comes out of our taps, whether it's city water or well water.

DAVID DUFFEY: We're looking at things like trace metals, which is iron, manganese, that sort of stuff, the general chemistry parameters, like chloride.

BRITT AAMODT: David Duffy is with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

DAVID DUFFEY: But we also utilize the network as a potential early warning network. So if there's a new sort of contaminant, a new topic or new thing, we have this network available and say, "All right, let's throw it at the network and see if we find it in background groundwater conditions."

BRITT AAMODT: His agency has been asked to use their network to analyze the state's groundwater and drinking water for the presence of microplastics. This is part of a multi-agency partnership that is conducting a broad survey of the state's water resources.

DAVID DUFFEY: It is basically a one-time snapshot of the presence of microplastics in the state. With that, we hope to move on to knowing how they move around in the environment. What is the fate and transport of microplastics in the environment?

BRITT AAMODT: Duffy is working closely with Liz Minor, a professor at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.

LIZ MINOR: What's motivated my work is trying to provide the toxicologists and health professionals with what concentrations and types of plastic they should be using in their studies and concerned about. But it's been challenging. We don't know what concentrations are present in the environment in a lot of cases, or what types of plastics are present.

BRITT AAMODT: The state water survey is going to try to fill in some of those gaps. And as researchers gather more data, they can get closer to answering those other questions about what microplastics are doing to our environment and to us. But even being a microplastics researcher doesn't mean that Minor thinks we should give up on plastic, that versatile and relatively cheap material, just yet.

LIZ MINOR: This is not a world where we can say we can't use plastics at all, at least I don't want to go back to that world. Because I do like safe food. I do like sterile medical equipment. I think what we need to do is be careful as consumers and intentional in what we do. In the same way we want to be intentional anytime we do something that might impact our relationship with the environment.

BRITT AAMODT: This is Brit Aamodt for North Star Stories.

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HOST: Cutting back on plastic can feel overwhelming but groups across Minnesota are working to help people find alternatives, change daily habits, and better understand plastic pollution. We are joined now by Lori Olinger, who is a co-lead with the Coalition for Plastic Reduction in Minnesota and the Sierra Club Zero Waste team. Both organizations are interested in looking at ways to reduce plastic waste. Thanks so much for joining us.

LORI OLINGER: Thanks.

HOST: Your organization is conducting a statewide survey on plastic knowledge and attitudes. What exactly are you learning so far, Lori?

LORI OLINGER: One thing that we've learned is that people are very concerned about plastic. A very high percentage of people said that they're concerned or very concerned about plastic, and most of them think that government should get more involved in helping us avoid plastic.

HOST: You also successfully advocated for laws requiring all packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2032. Can you tell us more about that?

LORI OLINGER: We worked on a bill Packaging Waste and Cost Reduction Act, mostly known as the EPR for packaging bill, and it will require producers of products to pay for packaging that they put onto the market, including the packaging that products are sent you like if you get an Amazon box and it's full of plastic. They would be covering that cost too. So it would hopefully incentivize them to use less plastic, to use less packaging altogether, and to use packaging that is more recyclable or compostable.

HOST: So what are the most effective ways that people can reduce single use plastics at home, at work and around their communities?

LORI OLINGER: I think the number one thing that they can do is take a look around your house and see what kind of plastic you're currently using. It's kind of surprising when you do take a hard look at what are all my products made out of—I know I started working on avoiding plastic at home and on the go. But I realized that I'm using a plastic cutting board. I'm using plastic mixing bowls. My coffee pot has plastic in it. So when I really took a hard look at that, I saw that there really a number of places where I could reduce it.

HOST: It's very interesting when you think about it, like you said, you look around your own home and you realize how much plastic you are using. Is that something that we need to do just continue to go through are just places like our homes, our work environment, and just get rid of plastic altogether.

LORI OLINGER: Like I said, well, I think it's going to be impossible to get rid of it altogether, like at the grocery store. It's really impossible to avoid food that's not packaged in plastic. But there's a lot of stuff that you can do to reduce your exposure to that. You can buy in bulk. You can buy, like produce that's not packaged.

HOST: You just don't think about how much plastic is in so many things.

LORI OLINGER: Yes, we are consuming a lot of plastic, and along with those little micro plastic particles or nano plastic particles come all the toxic chemicals, and those are really putting our health at risk.

HOST: Are there laws against this?

LORI OLINGER: There really aren't any laws right now to ban microplastics in products. We're starting to work on laws that would ban or phase out the chemicals in plastic that are really impacting our health. Another one of the laws that we were working on this year was with Consumer Reports, who did an investigation two years about phthalates, which is a plasticizer getting into our food. And so the law would be to require food manufacturers to test their food and then to make the results public. So at least consumers would be able to see how much is in our food and avoid it if they can.

HOST: Well, thank you so much, Lori, for your time. Thank you for the work that you're doing and keeping us aware and working on trying to keep us safe moving forward in the future. We appreciate your time today. Thank you.

LORI OLINGER: Great. Thank you.

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And before we go, the Minnesota Department of Transportation, MNDOT, is asking motorists and farm equipment operators to safely share the road during planting season. The agency says drivers should slow down and watch for large, slow-moving equipment, especially on rural two-lane roads. MNDOT reports 392 crashes involving farm equipment in Minnesota over the last two years, with 12 deaths and 167 injuries. Officials say farm equipment can be hard to see, slow to stop, and wide on turns. If you are driving by farming areas, use caution, keep your headlights on, and wait for a safe place to pass.

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This is it for today's program. If you missed any part of today's newscast, you can find this and past episodes at AMPERS.org or listen to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. You can also get North Star Stories daily on our website or check your favorite station's schedule. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week with more stories and voices from the North Star State.

OUTRO: North Star Stories is produced by AMPERS, diverse radio for Minnesota's communities, with support from the McKnight Foundation and the State of Minnesota. Online at AMPERS.org.