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CISCO Foundation Awards ADHD
Project Linking Teachers, Pediatricians, and Parents
Baltimore, MD: 20 March 2007 — The Cisco Systems Foundation announced
today a major award to the Center for Promotion of Child Development
through Primary Care for a novel research project to identify and optimize
the treatment of elementary school children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder in three Mississippi school districts.
The project is designed to reduce the adverse outcomes for children with
ADHD by assuring proper identification and treatment. The project will
test this assumption by assigning the participants to either a "usual
care" group or an intervention group in which the pediatrician uses
CHADIS, a clinical support technology, and then following them over time.
The research will examine whether children in the intervention group
have fewer behavioral symptoms, fewer school problems including reports
of disruptive classroom behavior, suspensions and expulsions, class absences,
behavioral interventions and better grades than children in the usual
care group. The Center expects that future follow-up studies will show
less substance abuse, depression, conduct disorder, and fewer accidents
and injuries.
Through the CHADIS technology, the project provides primary care physicians
with access to both teacher observations about their students and parent
observations about their children. This combination of parent and teacher
data, including an in-depth computerized interview of the parent, is
what is needed to confirm the diagnosis while avoiding over diagnosis
and to detect associated mental health conditions that are often overlooked.
At the same time CHADIS provides "point of care" physician
education and decision support to assist the doctor in confirming and/or
further exploring the problem, and in providing systematic treatment
planning. The linked resource database gives access to thousands of relevant
national and community resources for ADHD and other associated problems.
In these ways and through bi-monthly case conference webcasts the project
addresses the limited training and experience of many primary care doctors
with ADHD.
Treatment for those with a diagnosis will include both non-medication
and medication interventions. If medication is warranted and is chosen
by the family as part of the treatment plan, the intervention protocol
suggests that the effectiveness of the medicine be demonstrated through
a "single patient placebo trial". This will also be used to
optimize dosage. The treatment plan will also include parent education,
use of competency building activities, tutoring and mental health referral
when indicated. These activities help overcome the limitations that untreated
ADHD otherwise imposes on children.
For more information contact: Barbara Howard at +1 410-807-4500 |
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