Federal public health agencies announced on Wednesday the start of a pilot program to share Medicare and Medicaid data with the National Institutes of Health to tackle chronic diseases, starting with autism. 

The new partnership between the NIH and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services comes on the heels of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announcing last month his plan to identify the cause of autism within the year and develop a patient database for those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD.