Dataset Information

Provider and Caregiver Satisfaction with Telehealth Evaluation of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Young Children During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

ABSTRACT: The present study examines provider and caregiver satisfaction with telehealth evaluation of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in young children during the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic. A telehealth model of ASD evaluation was implemented with 308 children ages 14 to 78 months between May 2020 to June 2021. Data were gathered from electronic health records, autism-specific telehealth diagnostic tools, and post-evaluation surveys. Overall, the majority of providers and caregivers were satisfied with telehealth ASD evaluation. Multiple variables were associated with ratings of satisfaction, differing by providers and caregivers. Findings have important implications for the feasibility and acceptability of telehealth ASD evaluations, in addition to key factors to consider in optimizing and sustaining telehealth evaluations beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

SUBMITTER: Reisinger DL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9112250 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Provider and Caregiver Satisfaction with Telehealth Evaluation of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Young Children During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Reisinger Debra L DL Hines Elesia E Raches Christine C Tang Qing Q James Cristina C Keehn Rebecca McNally RM

Journal of autism and developmental disorders 20220517 12

The present study examines provider and caregiver satisfaction with telehealth evaluation of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in young children during the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic. A telehealth model of ASD evaluation was implemented with 308 children ages 14 to 78 months between May 2020 to June 2021. Data were gathered from electronic health records, autism-specific telehealth diagnostic tools, and post-evaluation surveys. Overall, the majority of providers and caregivers were ...[more]

PMID: 35579789

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Project description:Coaching caregivers to deliver Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Intervention (NDBI) strategies to their young child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) could help address the provider capacity barrier in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the behavioral and developmental research that underpins NDBIs is overwhelmingly drawn from high resource settings. Therefore, our understanding of joint activity routines, including play and family routines in which NDBI strategies are embedded, may have limited applicability in low resource, culturally diverse environments. Important questions remain on how to adapt NDBIs to be relevant in the family lives in these settings. This study aimed to elicit descriptions of joint activity routines from caregivers of young children with ASD in South Africa, to understand whether an NDBI-informed caregiver coaching could 'fit' within the multicultural, multilingual South African context. Four focus groups were conducted with 22 caregivers of young children with ASD who were recruited from the Western Cape Education Department autism waiting list. Data were analyzed through directed content analysis, which uses inductive methods to determine salient themes and subthemes. The predetermined initial coding classifications were based on joint activity routine categories of object-based play, sensory social routines, and family routines. Participants' descriptions of caregiver-child interactions aligned with a-priori joint activity routine categories. During object-based play, caregivers engaged in turn-taking, taught developmental skills (for example cognitive, language, and fine motor skills), and participated in child-directed activities. During sensory social routines, caregivers described active, physical play, awareness of child affect, increased child expressive language, and willingness to engage with different play partners. During family routines, caregivers detailed child participation in mealtime and bath time. These data suggest that South African caregivers of young children with ASD use joint activity routines to engage their children and teach them new skills, thus suggesting a degree of 'fit' between South African caregiver-child interactions and an NDBI-informed caregiver coaching approach. However, more information on family routines and which caregiver interacts with the young child with ASD during these routines would help tailor these interventions for low-resource African settings.

Project description:Social motivation is a foundational construct with regard to the etiology, neurobiology, and phenotype of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Multiple theories suggest that early emerging alterations to social motivation underlie a developmental cascade of social and communication deficits across the lifespan. Despite this significance, methods to measure social motivation vary widely, with little data to date as to how different measures might compare. In this study, we explore three existing caregiver-report measures that have been proposed to quantify social motivation among school-age children with ASD (n = 18; all male) and without ASD (n = 36; 50% female), with the broad goal of characterizing social motivation across measures and specific aims of investigating (a) diagnostic and sex differences in social motivation, (b) correspondence between measures, and (c) relationships between social motivation and broader social outcomes. Across all three measures, individuals with ASD had lower social motivation by caregiver-report. However, they did display individual differences in the degree of social motivation reported. There were no differences in social motivation between males and females without ASD on any of the three measures. For the full sample, measures of social motivation correlated with one another as anticipated, and stronger social motivation was associated with stronger social skills and fewer social difficulties. Our data suggest that social motivation among children with ASD may be best conceptualized as an individual difference that is diminished on average relative to peers but which varies among children and adolescents with ASD, rather than as an absolute absence or uniform deficit. LAY SUMMARY: Several theories suggest that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience less social motivation than their peers without ASD, contributing to difficulties in social skills. Based on multiple caregiver-report questionnaires, social motivation was reduced on average for school-age children with ASD but also varied among children with ASD. Stronger social motivation was related to stronger social skills and fewer social problems. Future work should include more girls with ASD, consider social motivation across age groups, and include first-hand perspectives from people with ASD.

Project description:Autism spectrum disorder is associated with an altered early brain development. However, the specific cortical structure abnormalities underlying this disorder remain largely unknown. Nonetheless, atypical cortical folding provides lingering evidence of early disruptions in neurodevelopmental processes and identifying changes in the geometry of cortical sulci is of primary interest for characterizing these structural abnormalities in autism and their evolution over the first stages of brain development. Here, we applied state-of-the-art sulcus-based morphometry methods to a large highly-selective cohort of 73 young male children of age spanning from 18 to 108 months. Moreover, such large cohort was selected through extensive behavioral assessments and stringent inclusion criteria for the group of 59 children with autism. After manual labeling of 59 different sulci in each hemisphere, we computed multiple shape descriptors for each single sulcus element, hereby separating the folding measurement into distinct factors such as the length and depth of the sulcus. We demonstrated that the central, intraparietal and frontal medial sulci showed a significant and consistent pattern of abnormalities across our different geometrical indices. We also found that autistic and control children exhibited strikingly different relationships between age and structural changes in brain morphology. Lastly, the different measures of sulcus shapes were correlated with the CARS and ADOS scores that are specific to the autistic pathology and indices of symptom severity. Inherently, these structural abnormalities are confined to regions that are functionally relevant with respect to cognitive disorders in ASD. In contrast to those previously reported in adults, it is very unlikely that these abnormalities originate from general compensatory mechanisms unrelated to the primary pathology. Rather, they most probably reflect an early disruption on developmental trajectory that could be part of the primary pathology.

Dataset Information

Provider and Caregiver Satisfaction with Telehealth Evaluation of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Young Children During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Publications

Provider and Caregiver Satisfaction with Telehealth Evaluation of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Young Children During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Similar Datasets

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