Similar to national trends, in Illinois, fatal opioid overdoses have risen. Black men (35+) outrank all other racial subgroups for the highest rate of fatal opioid overdoses in the state. To address this, Prevention First and the Illinois Department of Human Services developed a public health education campaign to support increasing enrollment in…

Youth substance use challenges their health and well-being. There is research and practical need for rigorous evaluation of substance use prevention programs in prompting positive youth development. This study examined the program effectiveness of Health Rocks!, a youth substance use prevention program, with a quasi-experimental two-factor mixed…

Diabetes is a chronic condition that has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, affecting nearly 34 million adults, and disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations, such as ethnic minorities, the elderly and individuals with low socioeconomic status. This study addresses the impact of the Health Extension for Diabetes (HED)…

The purpose of this study was to explore potential effects of a 12-week therapeutic mentoring program targeting social, emotional, and behavioral concerns in 52 children and adolescents between 11 and 17 years of age. Self-reported scores on a norm-referenced behavioral questionnaire were tracked across the span of a mentoring program, and then…

Treatment fidelity is essential for predicting student outcomes and discerning between intervention ineffectiveness and invalid implementation. Despite its significance, research on treatment fidelity within Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) and Response to Intervention (RTI) frameworks is limited. Despite their moderating role in…

Effective measures of the quality of services provide transparent and accountable standards to examine and illustrate high-quality care and contributions to client outcomes. They identify priorities for professional development action planning and allow practitioners to detect gaps in knowledge. Drawn from the need to measure and articulate…

Purpose: Treatment response is the degree to which an individual benefits from a treatment. This systematic review sought to identify and synthesize research evidence regarding individual characteristics that predict language treatment response among children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Method: To be eligible for inclusion,…

Interventions utilizing human-computer interaction (HCI) in autism rehabilitation have gained popularity, yet their efficacy has not been fully elucidated. This meta-analysis assessed 30 international studies from the past decade that employed HCIs for autism intervention. The findings revealed a moderate positive effect (g = 0.484) on improving…

Given existing barriers to a timely autism diagnosis, this study compares the efficiency and equity of diagnoses conducted in-person vs. telehealth in a developmental behavioral pediatrics setting. The transition to telehealth was prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Eleven months of clinic data in electronic medical records were retrospectively…

Neurodiverse children in day treatment programs often experience behavioral challenges that limit their opportunities to engage in recreational physical activities. These activities are important for physical health and aid in developing motor and socio-emotional skills. The present study used an explanatory sequential mixed methods design to…

Treatment foster care (TFC) provides critical mental health supports for youth with emotional, behavioral, and social difficulties who are at risk for adverse long-term outcomes. Existing evidence-based models of TFC are effective, yet resource-intensive, and they have relied primarily on evidence of implementation effectiveness with samples of…

Group therapy is an effective modality to treat various mental health concerns and is proven to have significant interpersonal benefits. Despite the high prevalence of sexual violence amongst college-aged women, there are limited contemporary models for providing a trauma-specific group for this population. This article describes an innovative…

Background: There are known health disparities in adolescent substance treatment access and engagement. The purpose of this project is to compare outcomes from school- and clinic-based substance treatment and to evaluate if providing school-based substance treatment reduces disparities in treatment access and engagement. Method: This quality…

The main purpose of this study was to systematically review and meta-analyse the single-case studies on the use of activity schedules with individuals with autism spectrum disorders. The other purposes were to describe the characteristics of activity schedule studies, assess the design standards of activity schedule studies, estimate the treatment…

Purpose: The purposes of this review article were to provide an introduction to and "bird's-eye" overview of the current evidence base for treatment of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), identify some gaps and trends in this rapidly growing literature, and formulate some future research directions, in order to advance the evidence base…