A Digital Health Parent-Training Intervention for Children With Social Communication Delays

Early intervention, during a time of optimal brain plasticity, is critical for autistic children to develop functional skills such as communication and daily living abilities. However, many families face barriers to accessing timely autism-specific services due to delays in autism diagnosis (which is often a prerequisite to autism-specific intervention), long waitlists, high costs, and the necessity to travel far distances to service providers. Self-directed parent-mediated digital health interventions (i.e., programs that parents complete online without provider coaching or feedback) offer a scalable solution to reduce challenges accessing intervention by providing evidence-based strategies that parents can implement without relying on traditional service pathways. The proposed pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) will test a revised self-directed parent-training program, that teache