Children of 4.2 million Mexican-American migrant farmworkers are at high risk for developmental delay and school failure due to the extreme poverty and stressful conditions that their families experience. To understand and prevent school failure, it is necessary to understand how families prepare young children for learning and to develop interventions which strengthen their parent-child interactions. The NCAST Feeding and Teaching Scales developed by Barnard and her colleagues are observational assessments of parent-child interactions with significant impact on promoting children's cognitive development. Barnard has also developed a Parent-Child Communication Coaching Program to facilitate parent-child interactions. Both need interpretation for use with Mexican-Americans, particularly Mexican-American migrant farmworkers, to identify the strengths of culturally-based parenting practices and early intervention based on such assessment. To address this need, Dr. Mary Lou de Leon Siantz's immediate career goal is to gain advanced skills in prevention research methodology and the cross- cultural translation of nursing theory to expand her research program to include preventive intervention trials with underserved Hispanic populations. Activities to achieve these goals include coursework, independent study, and a three-phased pilot study that will culturally adapt the NCAST Scales and modify the Coaching Program, a parent-child interaction intervention, for use with Mexican migrant mothers and infants in prevention research.
Study aims are to: 1) interpret the cultural meaning and concepts to the migrant mothers (caretakers) of the NCAST Scales and Coaching Program through semi-structured focus groups; 2) test the adapted NCAST Scales and Coaching Program with a random sample of 5 mothers (caretakers) and infants; 3) test the feasibility of having public health nurses use the modified NCAST Scales and Coaching Program to change mother's (caretaker's) teaching behavior and infant's language development with a random sample of 30 migrant mothers (caretakers) and infants. Findings from the 3 aims will set the stage for a full-scale clinical trial of the culturally adapted NCAST Scales and Coaching Program in a future RO1 application. This grant will help Dr. Mary Lou de Leon Siantz, a Mexican-American nurse, gain advanced skills in prevention science to address a major health concern, developmental delay in young Mexican American migrant children. The proposed study meets one of NINR's research priorities, to promote health and prevent disease, and addresses one of NINR's scientific areas of concern: infant growth and development.
