Justin Meade

By SEAN BARRON Correspondent

HUBBARD — When Justin Meade’s son, Jacen, was 2, he noticed something was amiss with his child.

Jacen first reached a plateau regarding certain developmental milestones, then began to regress in dramatic ways. He lost strides he had made verbally, became aggressive, began losing interest in his toys and other normal activities, and cried incessantly.

Around the same time, Jacen also developed seizures.

“He needs one-on-one support 24 hours a day for his safety. He has little danger awareness,” Meade said about Jacen, now 7, who was diagnosed with autism and epilepsy at age 3.

The combination of Meade’s work as a Hubbard police officer, his desire to better educate others about autism and other conditions, and his overall commitment toward helping others has resulted in Meade having started the Autism Awareness Training and Acceptance Program (AATAP).

All such outreach efforts also have made Meade one of this year’s Community Stars. The program, co-spon sored by the Tribune

Chronicle and Trumbull 100, recognizes the brightest examples of community service and the people who do those good deeds.

Nominating Meade for the honor was his wife, Ashley.

Meade now serves as program director and chief instructor for the nonprofit AATAP, which is designed to train and educate first responders and others about autism and other special-needs diagnoses. AATAP also seeks to train the public on effective ways to interact with those who have such conditions.

“We have the training aspect to not only train first responders and teachers and hospital staff and whoever how to interact and learn about these individuals and their particular health conditions, but also to work with individuals in general,” Meade explained.

AATAP, founded in October 2019, also offers free training to police officers, firefighters, hospital personnel, churches and other groups. Part of it entails developing greater awareness about autism and special needs, as well as “how to de-escalate (situations) the safest way,” Meade noted.

Along those lines, Meade has worked with Potential Development in Youngstown and the Autism Society of the Mahoning Valley. Specifically, he gave a training session at Potential Development for first responders to educate them about better understanding a person’s individual differences when responding to an incident or other situation.

To date, he has helped train more than 850 first responders, most of whom are in northeast Ohio, Meade continued.

“I see the passion he has with autism and helping people, and he’s always trying to help people in this community,” Ashley said about the primary reasons she cited for having nominated her husband for the Community Star award. “I thought this would be the perfect award for him for all the time he’s put in since our son was diagnosed.”

The couple also is helping to raise an 8-year-old relative who was diagnosed on the autism spectrum, she added. news@tribtoday.com