Through Wide Open Doors

Ava Bullard, Namesake of Ava’s Law, Navigates New Experiences in Dual Enrollment at Georgia Southern

When she was just a toddler, Georgia Southern University dual enrollment student Ava Bullard couldn’t stand to go through a doorway — any doorway. She would writhe and scream as if she were being tortured.

Ava was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder when she was just over 2 years old. Her parents, Noah and Anna, knew that interventions such as Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) could help Ava the way it’d helped thousands of autistic children, but it was not covered by insurance or Medicaid.

“The coverage didn’t even cover the diagnosis,” said Anna. “We paid cash for that.”

Noah and Anna maxed out credit cards, borrowed and saved where they could to get treatment for Ava and their efforts quickly paid off. Working with an ABA therapist from the Early Autism Project, Ava made significant improvements within a few weeks. She sat at a table, a simple task she’d never done before and she followed one-step directions, which Anna says blew her away.

Within months, Ava spoke her first word, “Cheeto.”

“I don’t know how or why,” said Ava, laughing. “I guess I just liked Cheetos.”

As Ava progressed, her mother lamented the fact that families like hers had to shoulder the burden for life-changing medical care. So she asked her uncle, Tommie Williams, a Georgia state senator at the time, how she could get autism covered by insurance.

“You’ll need to pass a law,” he said.

“I’ve never even been to the Capitol,” said Anna. “How am I going to pass a law?”

When Ava was just 4 years old, she and her mother made their first trip from their home in Lyons, Georgia, to the Capitol, walking through its large, golden doorways into the Rotunda, where legislators, assistants, lobbyists and reporters hustled up and down the large stairway and through its echoing chambers.

“I’m super naive because I was thinking I’m going to just go to the Capitol and bring Ava and just make everybody aware of something they don’t know, like kids with autism in Georgia can’t access life-changing treatment,” said Anna. “I just thought everybody would say, ‘Oh, my gosh! Thank you for bringing this to mind!’”

For Ava and her mother it took seven years of lobbying, testifying before legislative committees and getting kicked out of legislative offices before House Bill 429, known as “Ava’s Law,” brought insurance coverage for autism to Georgia in 2015.

“It makes me feel good knowing that families don’t have to struggle as much as we did just to get basic therapy,” said Ava.

Today, Ava is an honor graduate of Toombs County High School, where she was engaged in cheerleading, sports and student clubs. She says high school was difficult at first, and her social anxiety got the best of her until she got involved. Her first course at Georgia Southern was no different. She entered the doors of a lecture course to find some 300 people in her class. But as with every challenge she’s faced, she kept moving forward.

“It was definitely a little bit different, but I’m glad I did it because it just kind of eased me into college,” Ava said. “And I feel like when I go off to college, I’ll have a little bit more knowledge.”

Ava plans to start college in the fall to study astronomy. There, she’ll continue to charge through doorways of opportunity, and she’ll continue to be reminded of the doors she opened for so many others.

“There are people I don’t even know who come up to me and tell me, ‘Thank you for what you’ve done,’” she said. “And there are people that come up to me that have named their children after me, and it’s just something that’s mind-blowing. It makes me feel good knowing that me and my mom could just help so many people, but it’s something I guess I’ll never get used to — having a law in my name.” 

— Doy Cave