Our goal is to enhance the South African health care service delivery system by remediating communication disorders in children with developmental disorders (DD) and better serve families across diverse language backgrounds. Our central hypothesis is that incorporating mobile health technology (MHT) with a primary caregiver-implemented intervention can enhance culturally and linguistically appropriate communication intervention service delivery for young children with DD and associated speech and language impairments. Our hypotheses predict that a primary caregiver-implemented MHT-enhanced intervention approach will positively impact the speech-language services children with DD receive and their subsequent growth and development and will increase primary caregivers' and health care providers', satisfaction with child communication services. Our objectives are to 1) develop caregiver-implemented MHT enhanced communication interventions to provide increased intervention opportunities for the child and measure child and primary caregiver communication interactions and primary caregiver and health care provider satisfaction with child communication; 2) improve primary caregiver and speech-language pathologist satisfaction with child communication intervention; and 3) to continue to build the infrastructure for culturally and linguistically appropriate research evidence-based practice for children with DD. Our expected outcomes include 1) a new primary caregiver-implemented MHT enhanced intervention to promote better communication skills for both the child and caregiver that is applicable and deliverable in culturally and linguistically diverse settings; 2) greater caregiver and health care provider satisfaction with the child with the DD and 3) enhanced behavioral research capacity in South Africa by providing intervention research training experiences in different language contexts across health researchers. The impact of the proposed research will include enhanced health care service delivery to South African children with DD and their families from differing language backgrounds. These enhancements will better serve the children by remediating speech and language disorders early in life for children with DD. We expect that this MHT enhanced communication intervention will promote better communication skills for both the child and primary caregiver.
Aim 1 will develop a new caregiver-implemented MHT application that will integrate speech-language pathologist delivered intervention with daily primary caregiver implemented beginning communication activities for the period between monthly visits to the speech language pathologist.
Aim 2 will test the hypothesis that children with DD and their primary caregivers who receive a communication intervention enhanced by MHT will have more developed communication interaction skills than children who receive the standard secondary/tertiary care intervention.
Our goal is to remediate speech and language disorders early in the lives of South African children with developmental disorders (DD) by enhancing the health care service delivery system to better serve families across diverse backgrounds. Our expected outcomes include 1) the development of a new MHT enhanced communication intervention program that is applicable and deliverable in culturally and linguistically diverse settings; 2) a new hybrid intervention to promote better communication skills for both the child and caregiver; 3) greater caregiver and speech-language pathologist satisfaction related to the child with the DD and 4) enhanced behavioral research capacity in South Africa by providing intervention research training experiences in different language contexts across health researchers and speech-language practitioners. Our impact includes enhanced health care service delivery to South African children with DD and their families so as to better serve the children with DD by remediating speech and language disorders on a daily basis.
