Clinical trial NCT05994027: ATTACH™ Online Platform: Helping Children Vulnerable to Early Adversity
Official title: Attachment & Child Health (ATTACH™) Online Platform: Helping Children Vulnerable to Early Adversity
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: RECRUITING
Phase: NA
Conditions: Parent-Child Relations
Keywords: Parent Child Interaction Quality
Parental Reflective Function
Child Development
Online platform
Lead sponsor: University of Calgary
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2023-08-16
Enrollment: 160
Sex: ALL
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: NA
Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Primary purpose: TREATMENT

Brief summary: Addressing the impact of early childhood adversity (e.g., family violence, parental depression, and low income) can promote children's mental health and development, giving children the best start in life and reducing societal health inequities. Family violence, depression, and low income undermine parent-child relationship quality linked to mental health and developmental problems in children that tend to persist over the lifespan. Parents' reflective function (RF), i.e., the capacity to understand their own and their child's thoughts, feelings, and mental states, can strengthen parent-child relationships and buffer the negative impacts of early adversity on children. Investigators have developed and tested an effective intervention program called ATTACH™ (Attachment and Child Health) for parents and their preschool-aged children at-risk of early adversity. In research with 90 families, investigators found the intervention significantly improved RF, parent-child relationship quality, and children's mental health and development. When COVID-19 prevented in-person intervention at the same time as demand soared for ATTACH™, investigators developed and pilot tested (n=10) an Online platform or "platform" with our community partners, including parents, to deliver the program virtually. The purpose of the study is to propose an effective implementation hybrid (EIH) Type II study of the ATTACH™ Online platform. Co-primary objectives evaluate clinical intervention effectiveness and implementation strategy feasibility of the ATTACH™ Online platform in naturalistic, real-world settings delivered by community partner agencies serving families affected by early adversity in Alberta.

Detailed description: Methods: This effectiveness-implementation hybrid (EIH) Type II study is an innovative clinical trial comprised of a quasi-experimental design evaluation of the community-agency delivered ATTACH™ Online platform (with measurement pre-intervention, immediately post-intervention, and three months postintervention) as well as an examination of implementation feasibility via Normalization Process Theory. Investigators will work with 100 parents and children (aged newborn to 36 months).

Objective 1: Employing innovative clinical trial quasi-experimental methods, the effectiveness of the ATTACH™ Online platform will be evaluated on: (1a) children's mental health and development (primary outcome), parent-child relationship quality, and parental reflective function (secondary outcomes) immediately and three months after the intervention, (1b) different patient populations (for whom the program works best/worst), and (1c) health professionals' adherence to the clinical intervention protocol via fidelity assessment. For these objectives, investigators will intervene with 100 new families, a sufficiently powered n to detect minimum d=.5 (from pilot data and accounting for attrition) for pre-intervention/post-intervention differences in children's mental health and development.

Objective 2: Using qualitative methods, the feasibility of implementation of the ATTACH™ Online platform will be evaluated via (2a) knowledge of users' (patients/parents, health care professionals, and administrators) perceptions and experiences of the ATTACH™ Online platform, (2b) ATTACH™ Online platform uptake, and (2c) ATTACH™ Online platform implementation benefits, facilitators, barriers, and challenges. For these objectives, investigators will interview knowledge users (patients/parents, health care professionals, and administrators (n≈60)) until data saturation using Normalization Process Theory.

Study Setting： include 10 Alberta agencies (technically 9, as one agency operates two shelters) serving culturally diverse clients (i.e., Caucasian as well as Black, Indigenous, People of Colour; BIPOC) and immigrants affected by family violence, depression, and low-income. The agencies including Brenda Strafford Centre, Catholic Social Services, Children, Families, and Community Services, Central Alberta Women's Emergency Shelter, Discovery House (Women's Shelter), Highbanks, Home Next Door\*, Hull Social Services, Julietta's Place, La Salle Second Stage Shelter, Catholic Social Services and WINGS of Providence.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* parents with children between birth to 32 months of age (our age ceiling is 36 months, based on selection of age-platformropriate tools for assessing children's health and development );
* parents who agree to participate in the ATTACH™ Online platform program consisting of 10 weeks of additional, concurrent, one-hour per week parent training sessions;
* parents who agree to bring a co-parent for 2 of the 10 sessions (when possible).

Exclusion Criteria:

-

Primary outcomes:
measure: Children's Mental Health and Development
timeFrame: Change from baseline ASQ-3 scores immediately after completion of intervention and at 3 months.
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Parent-Child Relationship Quality
timeFrame: Change from baseline PCITS scores immediately after completion of intervention and at 3 months.
measure: Parental Reflective Function (RF)
timeFrame: Change from baseline PRFQ scores immediately after completion of intervention and at 3 months.
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Calgary
country: Canada
facility: University of Calgary
state: Alberta
Study officials:
affiliation: University of Calgary
name: Nicole Letourneau, PhD RN
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Anis L, Letourneau N, Benzies K, Ewashen C, Hart MJ. Effect of the Attachment and Child Health Parent Training Program on Parent-Child Interaction Quality and Child Development. Can J Nurs Res. 2020 Jun;52(2):157-168. doi: 10.1177/0844562119899004. Epub 2020 Jan 30.
citation: Ross KM, Cole S, Sanghera H, Anis L, Hart M, Letourneau N. The ATTACH program and immune cell gene expression profiles in mothers and children: A pilot randomized controlled trial. Brain Behav Immun Health. 2021 Oct 2;18:100358. doi: 10.1016/j.bbih.2021.100358. eCollection 2021 Dec.
citation: Letourneau N, Anis L, Novick J, Pohl C, Ntanda H, Hart M. Impacts of the Attachment and Child Health (ATTACHTM) Parenting Program on Mothers and Their Children at Risk of Maltreatment: Phase 2 Results. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Feb 9;20(4):3078. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20043078.
citation: Anis L, Letourneau N, Ross KM, Hart M, Graham I, Lalonde S, Varro S, Baldwin A, Soulsby A, Majnemer A, Donnelly C, Piotrowski C, Collier C, Lindeman C, Goldowitz D, Isaac D, Thomson D, Serre D, Citro E, Zimmermann G, Pliszka H, Mann J, Baumann J, Piekarski J, Dalton JA, Johnson-Green J, Wood K, Bruce M, Santana M, Mayer M, Gould M, Kobor M, Flowers M, Haywood M, Koerner M, Parker N, Muhajarine N, Fairie P, Chrishti R, Perry R, Merrill S, Pociuk S, StephanieTaylor, Cole S, Murphy T, Marchment T, Xavier V, Shajani Z, West Z. Study protocol for Attachment & Child Health (ATTACHTM) program: promoting vulnerable Children's health at scale. BMC Pediatr. 2022 Aug 19;22(1):491. doi: 10.1186/s12887-022-03439-3.
citation: Letourneau N, Anis L, Ntanda H, Novick J, Steele M, Steele H, Hart M. Attachment & Child Health (ATTACH) pilot trials: Effect of parental reflective function intervention for families affected by toxic stress. Infant Ment Health J. 2020 Jul;41(4):445-462. doi: 10.1002/imhj.21833. Epub 2020 Jun 13.
citation: Anis L, Ross K, Ntanda H, Hart M, Letourneau N. Effect of Attachment and Child Health (ATTACHTM) Parenting Program on Parent-Infant Attachment, Parental Reflective Function, and Parental Depression. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jul 10;19(14):8425. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19148425.
citation: Squires J, Bricker D, Potter L. Revision of a parent-completed development screening tool: Ages and Stages Questionnaires. J Pediatr Psychol. 1997 Jun;22(3):313-28. doi: 10.1093/jpepsy/22.3.313.
citation: Luyten P, Mayes LC, Nijssens L, Fonagy P. The parental reflective functioning questionnaire: Development and preliminary validation. PLoS One. 2017 May 4;12(5):e0176218. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176218. eCollection 2017.
citation: Letourneau NL, Tryphonopoulos PD, Novick J, Hart JM, Giesbrecht G, Oxford ML. Nursing Child Assessment Satellite Training Parent-Child Interaction Scales: Comparing American and Canadian Normative and High-Risk Samples. J Pediatr Nurs. 2018 May-Jun;40:47-57. doi: 10.1016/j.pedn.2018.02.016. Epub 2018 Mar 22.
citation: Anis L, Benzies KM, Ewashen C, Hart MJ, Letourneau N. Fidelity Assessment Checklist Development for Community Nursing Research in Early Childhood. Front Public Health. 2021 May 14;9:582950. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.582950. eCollection 2021.