March marks a significant time of recognition and advocacy as we celebrate National Developmental Disabilities Month. This annual observance provides a platform to raise awareness, promote inclusion, and celebrate the unique abilities and contributions of individuals with developmental disabilities. Throughout the month, communities, organizations, and individuals come together to foster understanding, support, and opportunities. To celebrate this observance, we interviewed Dr. Eric Flake, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician who works adamantly through the Department of Defense (DoD) as a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel.
With five kids of his own, Dr. Flake is “passionate about taking care of kids” and “dedicated a career to trying to help and support them and their needs, in particular kids that have difficulties with developing, whether they’re identified or unidentified.” He mentions his appreciation for the neurodiversity movement in addition to quantifiable understanding that can help kiddos with challenges progress: “It’s a little bit of a dance, but I think it’s worthwhile because if you only send one message out, then sometimes the second message gets missed.”
While Dr. Eric Flake has worked with FASD through most of his career, he says, “I, like probably many clinicians and families have not identified just how much FASD can play a part in the neurodevelopmental greater scheme of things.” He explains that FASD has a larger influence than we often give it credit for, due to stigma and misunderstanding, but he’s “looking forward to seeing it become much more recognized as a neurodevelopmental disorder.” This is why our mission of giving FASD a seat at the table is so vital, so that areas that may not usually include FASD can expand upon their relationship. Dr. Flake is no stranger to intersectionality, as a large part of his medical career has been serving military families; during his time as a program director of the Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics Fellowship at Joint Base Lewis McChord, he initiated the DoD JBLM Center for Autism Resource, Education, and Services (CARES).
The CARES Center, “has been a very successful model of care where the hub was based at a large medical center and the spokes were the smaller military sites that are often in rural or medically underserved communities that couldn’t have access to some of the specialty care.” With the transition to virtual care and telehealth medicine, Dr. Flake is optimistic that this model in the military will continue to benefit all people around the United States, and the world. “Sometimes it’s scalable based off of funding and support, but so far it’s shown a tremendous impact on the families that have been able to be served.” He is now in the process of creating a center that would work with those in the neurodiversity sphere, including FASD “The Supporting Toddlers to Adults Reach Success (STARS) Neurodevelopmental Clinic is a telehealth evaluation and treatment clinic that’s able to help families with neurodevelopmental disorders, to include fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.” He expects that the center will be accepting referrals before the end of 2024, and that telehealth will continue to revolutionize outreach and access for those in need.
“I do think that some of that initial work for autism, another neurodevelopmental disorder, is what attracted me to have an interest in FASD. I believe that we could align some of the principles behind caring for individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders into a broader umbrella of care.” Dr. Flake is an advocate of synergy, explaining, “I believe that as we work to elevate the support for neurodiversity and as we’re coming upon Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month, this is a great time to look at working in collaboration across neurodevelopmental domains.” He emphasizes the spectrum perspective, in skills and cognitive abilities.
This ideology has shaped his professional view, “It is a little bit different than other medical models where it’s not “fixing something” it’s working on adapting how to help with identifying what the challenge is. But then reframing it is a strength-based dialogue versus the idea that “you’re broken and need to be fixed.” This mindset allows Dr. Flake to achieve optimal developmental outcomes and trajectory changes for his patients. He also recognizes the impact it has on families, “for those families that get a new diagnosis, having a strengths-based approach and discussing the resiliency and the identity of neurodiversity can be very formulating for them as they move forward.” By highlighting an individual’s strengths, medical professionals can help support any challenges or difficulties that come with a diagnosis, like FASD. “If you just focus on weaknesses interestingly enough the strengths diminish and overall you don’t have a neutral effect despite doing a lot of work to try to help move them forward.”
Dr. Eric Flake implements resilience into his practice, stressing its importance, especially based on his experiences with the military health care system, “Resilience came about as a terminology around 9/11 and how to help military families cope with deployment, with stress.” He desires to address the issue without glossing over its challenges, stating, “I do think that we’re overall better if we foster a culture of resilience and we celebrate resilience for what it is. Now I don’t think we need to sugarcoat things but I do think that we need to highlight resilience and the benefit that it has for all of us.” When people feel supported, they feel more capable of expressing their needs, addressing their difficulties, and promoting their strengths. “Trying to cast shame on a symptom doesn’t help build resilience. I applaud the Department of Defense and our collaboration with FASD United to try and bring a strengths-based support to the forefront.”
Collaboration is the name of the game, rather than comparison, and Dr. Flake believes that neurodevelopmental disorders should support one another to create increased awareness for developmental disabilities. “I do think there is an opportunity of looking at advocacy groups and families that have advocated for other neurodevelopmental disorders and synergizing the work together.” He believes in models, creating lasting systems that can help the most amount of people possible, as he has explored with his centers. “This is an exciting time for FASD to really integrate with the rest of the neurodevelopmental community.”
As an FASD-informed medical professional, Dr. Eric Flake wants to acknowledge the unique strengths and challenges of those living with FASD. He understands that there are behavioral components of FASD that must be addressed, but suggests reframing to “identify what behaviors we need to support and then have goal-directed strategies to mitigate damaging behavior and build healthy skills.” Recognizing the courage and hard work of individuals with FASD, he states, it allows us to practice that skill for everyone around us and be able to look inside ourselves and understand more about humanity…And I think if we all take a second, there are people with identified neurotypical brains that can learn a lot from people with neurodiverse brains and vice versa.”
Celebrating Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month is an important step, “It’s pretty impressive that people with disabilities constantly work on their challenges every day that are a result of a neurodevelopmental disorder.” Dr. Flake acknowledges the significance of self-advocacy, asking, “How do we continue to help support individuals with living experiences to continue to advocate for themselves and see themselves as something contributory and not that they are broken?” This maturation of humanity is something to strive for, and Dr. Eric Flake is a leading figure in this realm, acknowledging where we came from, and where we are going. “I’m grateful for those who read this. I’m grateful for those who take the time to at least be a little bit more informed in this day and age when there’s so much information and data, taking a little bit of their time to be thoughtful about this concept is a step in the right direction.“
We are grateful for this insight during National Developmental Disabilities Month. Let’s continue to support those living with developmental disabilities and express our compassion. Together, we can create inclusive communities where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered. A special thank you to Dr. Flake for his passion and contributions to the field of medicine as a whole.