Faculty Bibliography

Importance/UNASSIGNED:Children of parents expressing limited comfort with English (LCE) or limited English proficiency may be at increased risk of adverse events (harms due to medical care). No prior studies have examined, in a multicenter fashion, the association between language comfort or language proficiency and systematically, actively collected adverse events that include family safety reporting. Objective/UNASSIGNED:To examine the association between parent LCE and adverse events in a cohort of hospitalized children. Design, Setting, and Participants/UNASSIGNED:This multicenter prospective cohort study was conducted from December 2014 to January 2017, concurrent with data collection from the Patient and Family Centered I-PASS Study, a clinician-family communication and patient safety intervention study. The study included 1666 Arabic-, Chinese-, English-, and Spanish-speaking parents of general pediatric and subspecialty patients 17 years and younger in the pediatric units of 7 North American hospitals. Data were analyzed from January 2018 to May 2020. Exposures/UNASSIGNED:Language-comfort data were collected through parent self-reporting. LCE was defined as reporting any language besides English as the language in which parents were most comfortable speaking to physicians or nurses. Main Outcomes and Measures/UNASSIGNED:The primary outcome was adverse events; the secondary outcome was preventable adverse events. Adverse events were collected using a systematic 2-step methodology. First, clinician abstractors reviewed patient medical records, solicited clinician reports, hospital incident reports, and family safety interviews. Then, review and consensus classification were completed by physician pairs. To examine the association of LCE with adverse events, a multivariable logistic regression was conducted with random intercepts to adjust for clustering by site. Results/UNASSIGNED:Of 1666 parents providing language-comfort data, 1341 (80.5%) were female, and the mean (SD) age of parents was 35.4 (10.0) years. A total of 147 parents (8.8%) expressed LCE, most of whom (105 [71.4%]) preferred Spanish. Children of parents who expressed LCE had higher odds of having 1 or more adverse events compared with children whose parents expressed comfort with English (26 of 147 [17.7%] vs 146 of 1519 [9.6%]; adjusted odds ratio, 2.1; 95% CI, 1.2-3.7), after adjustment for parent race and education, complex chronic conditions, length of stay, site, and the intervention period. Similarly, children whose parents expressed LCE were more likely to experience 1 or more preventable adverse events (adjusted odds ratio, 2.3; 95% CI, 1.2-4.2). Conclusions and Relevance/UNASSIGNED:Hospitalized children of parents expressing LCE were twice as likely to experience harms due to medical care. Targeted strategies are needed to improve communication and safety for this vulnerable group of children.

Objective: Access to evidence-based psychosocial interventions for the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a challenge in urban, socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. Approaches that leverage existing but underdeveloped workforces and connects these with well-established settings that treat ADHD offers an opportunity to address this barrier. This pilot study focused on a preliminary test of the potential utility of paraprofessional-delivered behavioral parent training (BPT) to parents of children with ADHD being treated in a developmental behavioral pediatric practice. Method: In an open clinical trial of 7 families, Family Peer Advocate paraprofessionals delivered BPT to parents of children with ADHD. Parent reports of their child's ADHD symptoms/ oppositional defiant behaviors and functional impairment were assessed before, weekly during BPT, and immediately after BPT. Parents report of their positive and negative parenting behaviors were assessed before and immediately after BPT. Results: Findings demonstrated that participation in BPT was associated with improvements in child-and parent-level outcomes, with moderate to large effects across outcomes. Conclusions: Integrating existing service systems with oversight through pediatric psychologists offers opportunities to efficiently utilize resources, thereby increasing access to evidence-based interventions for ADHD in urban, socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. This study advances the scope of paraprofessional involvement in formal pediatric settings. In addition, it highlights the potential effectiveness of peer-to-peer delivered services.

The chapters and reports in this book explore a wide variety of topics related to how health literacy can impact clinical practice and public health. While health literacy is relevant to healthcare issues across populations, it has unique implications in the field of pediatrics, where parents and other caregivers are responsible for managing their child's healthcare. Younger children have varying roles and involvement; over time, as children reach adolescence, they have an increasing understanding of and participation in their healthcare. This chapter will review the epidemiology of health literacy in parents, adolescents, and children, and how this compares to the general adult population. It will highlight unique considerations regarding health literacy and pediatric health. The chapter will then focus on the impact of health literacy and relevant health literacy-informed interventions on pediatric health. Finally, the chapter will discuss gaps in the literature and future directions.

Children from low-income families are more likely than their higher income peers to show delays in language and literacy skills, both at school entry and across the lifespan. Programs aimed at promoting language and literacy activities in the home, particularly programs that combine distribution of print materials with support and guidance for using them, have been effective in decreasing the word gap, leading to increased school readiness and early literacy. The current study examined the impact of such a program based in pediatric healthcare, Reach Out and Read (ROR), on parents' use of community resources that also provide access to print-namely, the public library-in the context of a citywide initiative to link literacy resources for low-income families. Effects of both ROR and the library, both individually and combined, on parents' literacy activities at home were then examined. Significant associations between receiving ROR, using the public library, and parent-child book sharing were found. Implications for intervention and policy are discussed.