Adapting ECHO for Autistic Children's Communication - PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT This K23 Award is essential to the Candidate's (Dr. Andrea Ford) success as an independent early childhood special education community-engaged researcher. Dr. Ford's research mission is to partner with relevant and interested parties to design and deliver feasible, acceptable, appropriate, and efficacious professional development for preschool educators. In doing so, she aims to increase the adoption and use of neurodiverse affirming, naturalistic developmental behavioral intervention strategies to promote positive communication outcomes for autistic preschoolers. To achieve this goal genuinely and rigorously, Dr. Ford must gain knowledge and hands-on experience in community-based participatory research methods, mixed methods research, and executing randomized control trials in complex educational settings. Dr. Ford has assembled a complementary team of NIH-funded experts with experience in community-engaged research, autism, communication, dissemination, and implementation—Drs. Meinzen-Derr, Landa, and Rosen. Along with these mentors, Dr. Ford crafted a career development plan to provide her with the necessary training and experiences to elevate her research program to the next level. As outlined in the training plan, Dr. Ford's career development plan is balanced with formal coursework, professional development experiences to apply this knowledge, and regular mentoring and consultation meetings to coalesce knowledge and skills gained. This training plan and research aims will build on her existing skill set in observational and measurement research. Matched with the Career Development aims, the proposed K23 research project seeks to unite preschool educators and researchers through an ongoing, virtual learning community, adapting the Extension of Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) Model from the medical field to education. There are two aims: Aim 1 (Inform Development): we will probe the professional development needs, priorities, and preferences of 75 preschool educators through Group Level Assessment methods. This methodology allows for real-time analysis and employs preschool educators as co-analysts and equal partners in the research to inform the development of the Preschool Autism ECHO; Aim 2 (Develop and Pilot Study): we will examine the feasibility of the Preschool Autism ECHO through a mixed methods approach. Four content specialists and 35 preschool educators will participate in a collaborative virtual learning community. Data collection includes educator self-report questionnaires, language and communication measures for autistic preschoolers, post- session surveys, and qualitative interviews. The team hypothesizes that participation in the Preschool Autism ECHO learning community will be feasible and result in positive changes in educators' knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and intention to implement the strategies. Dr. Ford's subsequent research will refine and optimize the program, testing its impact on preschool educators' strategy use and autistic preschoolers' communication outcomes. Her trajectory from to an Early Career R21 is strong and strengthened as a K23 mentee.
