SCC-IRG Track 2: Smart and Connected Family Engagement for Equitable Early Intervention Service Design

有发育障碍或发育迟缓的婴幼儿使用早期干预(EI)进行康复服务。然而，对于种族和民族多样化以及社会弱势家庭来说，EI的质量受到了影响。提高EI质量的一个关键杠杆是以家庭为中心的护理，这是一种基于证据的方法，其基础是家庭参与共享决策。这个项目的动机是需要为家庭提供一个智能和连接的选择，以参与为他们的孩子设计EI服务计划。这项工作将开发和评估升级的参与和环境措施(PEM)，这是一种基于证据的电子选择，用于指导公平的以家庭为中心的EI服务设计。PEM升级将(A)提高种族和民族多样性家庭的内容相关性，以及(B)利用现代人工智能解决方案，将PEM用户体验个性化到更广泛的EI注册家庭。这一升级后的PEM电子选择将在种族和民族多样化的EI家庭中进行评估，以评估其提高EI质量的能力，并评估其在更广泛的EI服务系统中长期实施的支持和障碍。该项目为在EI服务设计期间指导以家庭为中心的护理的第一个定制的、与文化相关的电子选项建立了证据。所开发的方法和技术可能适用于类似的服务环境。此外，该项目增加了在计算机科学和康复科学的交叉点进行跨学科研究的机会，在EI服务提供商和儿科康复职业培训的学生之间建立跨专业参与研究的能力，并在不同的研究实验室资助来自历史上代表性不足的群体的学生，这些研究实验室重视包容性优秀。该建议在两个方面为以家庭为中心的EI开发了关键创新。首先，对于PEM电子选项，该项目将(A)增加与种族和族裔多样化家庭的内容相关性，(B)使PEM用户体验个性化，以满足更广泛的EI登记家庭的需求。对于前者，该项目将建立与原始PEM评估的文化等价物，并严格审查其干预内容，以确保家庭可以表达对种族气候的关切，并利用社区偏好的沟通渠道收集和分享实现目标的战略。对于后者，该团队将在PEM干预中加入自适应对话代理，以改进护理者的导航和指导，我们将开发方法，根据个别护理者的需求自动定制其策略交换功能。这些创新将导致自然语言处理研究的根本性进展，通过研究面向任务或混合主动对话系统的适应性对话策略、通用对话行为图式和词典信息的意义表征。我们将评估升级后的PEM电子方案，让不同种族和社会处境不利的EI登记家庭参与，以评估其能力，以改善照顾者和提供者对以家庭为中心的EI服务质量的看法，提高家长对EI服务计划实施的参与度，并增加以参与为重点的EI服务计划的可用性和相关性。我们将让EI利益相关者参与评估其在EI中长期实施的支持和障碍。这些进展将为在EI中促进以家庭为中心的护理提供定制的、与文化相关的电子选项的证据。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Infants and toddlers with developmental disabilities or delays use early intervention (EI) for rehabilitation services. Yet, EI quality is compromised for racially and ethnically diverse and socially disadvantaged families. A key lever to improve EI quality is family-centered care, an evidence-based approach that is grounded in family engagement for shared decision-making. This project is motivated by the need to give families a smart and connected option for engaging in the design of the EI service plan for their child. This effort will develop and evaluate an upgraded Participation and Environment Measure (PEM), an evidence-based electronic option for directing equitable family-centered EI service design. PEM upgrades will (a) increase content relevance for racially and ethnically diverse families, and (b) leverage modern artificial intelligence solutions to personalize the PEM user experience to a broader range of EI enrolled families. This upgraded PEM electronic option will be evaluated in a population of racially and ethnically diverse EI families, to assess for its capacity to improve EI quality and to appraise supports and barriers to its longer-term implementation within the broader EI service system. This project builds evidence for the first customized, culturally relevant electronic option to direct family-centered care during EI service design. The approaches and technologies developed may be applicable to similar service contexts. Additionally, this project increases opportunities for conducting interdisciplinary research at the intersection of computer science and rehabilitation science, building interprofessional capacity for research engagement among EI service providers and students training for pediatric rehabilitation careers, and sponsoring students from historically underrepresented groups in diverse research labs that value inclusive excellence.This proposal develops key innovations to family-centered EI in two ways. First, for the PEM electronic option, the project will (a) increase content relevance for racially and ethnically diverse families, and (b) personalize the PEM user experience to a broader range of EI enrolled families. For the former, the project will establish cultural equivalencies of the original PEM assessment and critically examine its intervention content to ensure that families can voice concerns about racial climate and collect and share goal attainment strategies using community-preferred communication channels. For the latter, the team will incorporate an adaptive conversational agent into the PEM intervention to improve caregiver navigation and guidance, and we will develop methods to automatically customize its strategy exchange feature to individual caregiver needs. These innovations will result in fundamental advances to natural language processing research through the investigation of adaptive dialogue policies for task-oriented or mixed-initiative dialogue systems, generalized dialogue act schema, and lexicon-informed meaning representations. We will evaluate the upgraded PEM electronic option with racially and ethnically diverse and socially disadvantaged EI enrolled families, to assess for its capacity to improve caregiver and provider perceptions of family-centered EI service quality, improve parent engagement in EI service plan implementation, and increase the availability and relevance of participation-focused EI service plans. We will engage EI stakeholders to appraise supports and barriers to its longer-term implementation in EI. These advances will yield evidence for a customized, culturally-relevant electronic option to foster family-centered care in EI.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.