Dataset Information

Access to Autism Spectrum Disorder Services for Rural Appalachian Citizens.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Low-resource rural communities face significant challenges regarding availability and adequacy of evidence-based services.

Purposes

With respect to accessing evidence-based services for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), this brief report summarizes needs of rural citizens in the South-Central Appalachian region, an area notable for persistent health disparities.

Methods

A mixed-methods approach was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data during focus groups with 33 service providers and 15 caregivers of children with ASD in rural southwest Virginia.

Results

Results supported the barriers of availability and affordability of ASD services in this region, especially relating to the need for more ASD-trained providers, better coordination and navigation of services, and addition of programs to assist with family financial and emotional stressors. Results also suggested cultural attitudes related to autonomy and trust towards outside professionals that may prevent families from engaging in treatment.

Implications

Relevant policy recommendations are discussed related to provider incentives, insurance coverage, and telehealth. Integration of autism services into already existing systems and multicultural sensitivity of providers are also implicated.

SUBMITTER: Scarpa A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9138840 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Access to Autism Spectrum Disorder Services for Rural Appalachian Citizens.

Scarpa Angela A Jensen Laura S LS Gracanin Denis D Ramey Sharon L SL Dahiya Angela V AV Ingram L Maria LM Albright Jordan J Gatto Alyssa J AJ Scott Jen P JP Ruble Lisa L

Journal of Appalachian health 20200126 1

<h4>Background</h4>Low-resource rural communities face significant challenges regarding availability and adequacy of evidence-based services.<h4>Purposes</h4>With respect to accessing evidence-based services for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), this brief report summarizes needs of rural citizens in the South-Central Appalachian region, an area notable for persistent health disparities.<h4>Methods</h4>A mixed-methods approach was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data during focus grou ...[more]

PMID: 35769534

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Project description:The current study evaluated three social cognition (SC) tests for their clinical utility in aiding autism diagnosis. To do so, we compared the performance of 86 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 68 typically developing (TD) children, all aged from 4 to 10 years old, on three SC tasks [the Social Information Processing Interview (SIPI), the Comic Strip Task (CST), and the children's version of the Eyes Task] and calculated threshold scores that best differentiated the two groups. While difficulties in these abilities appear to represent the "central core" of ASD, services have largely ignored SC tests when supporting autism diagnoses. Therefore, this study attempted to validate and evaluate the diagnostic potential of these three tasks for children with ASD. To investigate the accuracy of these SC tests, we used the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. As expected, the ASD group performed worse than the TD group on the SIPI and CST, but contrary to our prediction, the groups did not significantly differ on the Eyes Task. Specifically, the overall area under the curve (AUC) for the SIPI was 0.87, with a sensitivity of 73.5% and a specificity of 83.9% at the best cutoff point (score range 0-36; best cutoff = 31). The overall AUC for the CST was 0.75, with a sensitivity of 71.1% and a specificity of 77.0% at the best cutoff point (score range 0-15; best cutoff = 11). The overall AUC for the Eyes Task was 0.51, with a sensitivity of 50.3% and a specificity of 40.2% at the best cutoff point (score range 0-54; best cutoff = 45). In conclusion, the results showed that the SIPI test has good predictive power for classifying children with ASD. It should provide substantial supplementary clinical information and help to consolidate diagnostic procedures based on standard tools. Moreover, the results of the study have substantial implications for clinical practice: the better the knowledge of SC functioning in children with ASD, the more effective the intervention program for rehabilitation.

Dataset Information

Access to Autism Spectrum Disorder Services for Rural Appalachian Citizens.

Background

Purposes

Methods

Results

Implications

Publications

Access to Autism Spectrum Disorder Services for Rural Appalachian Citizens.

Similar Datasets

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