Head Start Family Navigator Intervention

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Developmental Delay

In brief

Headstart (HS) is an early childhood education program for low-income children. Preliminary analyses of Hamilton County HS preschoolers with developmental concerns identified 26% with "severe concern" necessitating developmental testing, and only 47% followed-through when some developmental concern was identified. Those less likely to follow-through were African American or Hispanic, lived in larger families, or had asthma. Cultural and economic factors are known barriers to earlier diagnosis of children with developmental disabilities (DD) among African American, Hispanic and low-income children. Given that HS children are low-income and culturally diverse, preschoolers are likely to face barriers to early identification of DD and subsequently kindergarten readiness. Patient navigator programs are effective interventions for vulnerable populations to improve health care access, increase treatment adherence, enhance trust in health care systems, and reduce health care costs. A family (FN) intervention that is culturally-adapted to promote caregiver follow-through, and undergirded by HS's mission of kindergarten success may effectively increase caregiver adherence to developmental testing. The goal of this study is to develop and pilot test a FN intervention in HS that is executed by peer-to-peer navigators to improve adherence with developmental testing in high-risk preschoolers.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT03499405

Run by

Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati

People needed

36

Starts

2017-08-01

Expected to finish

2018-06-30

Last updated by the study team

2018-07-24

Who can join

Age: 3 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

You may qualify if…

• FN participants will be current or former HS parents and sampled from urban and suburban HS.Eight FNs will be trained to support and guide caregivers through developmental testing, including 4 African American, 2 Caucasian and 2 bi-lingual Hispanic parents. Each FN will be assigned 1 to 4 caregivers.
• The study sample of caregiver participants will include 32 eligible HS caregivers of preschoolers between 3 and 4 years old identified with moderate or severe developmental concerns on HS developmental screening, in order to include those at-risk before kindergarten age. Those with moderate developmental concern will have failed 2 domains on developmental screening, whereas those with severe concern have failed 3 or more domains. Those who fail 1 domain (mild concern) will be excluded since often single domain failures are due to limited early learning exposures and/or language barriers, which can be adequately addressed in HS.24,25 Half of those selected will be sampled from the moderate and half from the severe group, with 50% from urban and 50% from suburban HS centers included. Given that the demographics differ slightly in racial and ethnic make-up among the urban and suburban Head Starts, 12 African American, 2 Caucasian and 2 Hispanic caregivers will be sampled from urban HS; in suburban HS, 8 African American, 6 Caucasian and 2 Hispanic caregivers will be sampled.

You may not qualify if…

• For FN, not being a former head start parent.
• For caregiver, child not failing more than 2 or more domains on developmental testing.

Where it is running

• Cincinnati Childrens Hospital Medical Center — Cincinnati, Ohio, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

Trial information comes from ClinicalTrials.gov and is refreshed daily. TrialsForMe does not provide medical care and does not run the studies it lists.