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质量受到损害。提高EI质量的一个关键杠杆是以家庭为中心的护理，这是一种以家庭参与共同决策为基础的循证方法。这个项目的动机是需要给家庭一个智能和连接的选择，为他们的孩子设计EI服务计划。这项工作将开发和评估一个升级的参与和环境措施（PEM），以证据为基础的电子选项，指导公平的家庭为中心的EI服务设计。PEM升级将（a）增加种族和民族多样化家庭的内容相关性，（B）利用现代人工智能解决方案为更广泛的EI注册家庭提供个性化的PEM用户体验。这种升级的PEM电子选项将在种族和民族多样化的EI家庭人口中进行评估，以评估其提高EI质量的能力，并评估在更广泛的EI服务系统中长期实施的支持和障碍。该项目建立证据的第一个定制的，文化相关的电子选项，直接以家庭为中心的护理在EI服务设计。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服务提供者和儿科康复职业培训学生之间建立跨专业的研究参与能力，并赞助学生从历史上代表性不足的群体在不同的研究实验室，价值包容性卓越。这项建议发展的关键创新，以家庭-以两种方式为中心。首先，对于PEM电子选项，该项目将（a）增加种族和民族多样化家庭的内容相关性，以及（B）个性化PEM用户体验，以更广泛的EI注册家庭。对于前者，该项目将建立原始PEM评估的文化等效性，并严格审查其干预内容，以确保家庭能够表达对种族气候的担忧，并使用社区首选的沟通渠道收集和分享实现目标的策略。对于后者，该团队将在PEM干预中加入自适应对话代理，以改善护理人员的导航和指导，我们将开发自动定制策略交换功能以满足个人护理人员需求的方法。这些创新将导致自然语言处理研究的根本性进展，通过调查的自适应对话政策，面向任务或混合主动对话系统，广义对话行为模式，和词汇知情的意义表示。我们将评估升级后的PEM电子选项与种族和民族多样性和社会弱势的EI登记的家庭，以评估其能力，以改善照顾者和供应商的家庭为中心的EI服务质量的看法，提高家长参与EI服务计划的实施，并增加参与为重点的EI服务计划的可用性和相关性。我们会让教育机构的持份者参与评估在教育机构长期推行教育计划的支持和障碍。这些进步将产生定制的，文化相关的电子选项，以促进以家庭为中心的照顾在EI证据。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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.