Comparative Effectiveness of Primary Care-based Interventions for Pediatric ADHD

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most common neurobehavioral disorder of childhood, affecting approximately 8% of youth. Children with ADHD often have problems sustaining attention and completing multi-step commands and tasks of daily living, such as homework. Pediatricians are often the first physicians to identify problems with children's functioning at home and at school. However, because of limited visit time, pediatricians often struggle with managing ADHD while trying to also cover a vast array of other primary care issues. Moreover, as there is a nationwide shortage of pediatric mental health specialists and access to parenting programs is limited, a critical need exists to develop interventions that form partnerships between behavioral and mental health specialists and the primary care pediatrician. One approach is to base interventions in the pediatric clinic to ensure children have access to appropriate treatment. Thus far, only a limited number of sites have this pediatric-mental health partnership.

Health information technology (HIT) has been used to enhance primary care management of ADHD. HIT can improve pediatricians' ability not only to adhere to recommended guidelines, but also to screen for co-existing disorders and provide timely parental education. An alternative strategy might be to use group visits (GV). GV afford more time with families and allows the pediatrician to facilitate more in-depth discussions. More importantly, the group model allows parents to learn from one another, normalizes parenting expectations, and addresses shared experiences of medication side effects and other factors related to adherence. Moreover, a group visit can be conducted in a physical location, such as the pediatric clinic, or be brought into the virtual world with the aid of social media. Virtual support groups for chronic care diseases have become an increasingly popular way for a community of individuals to exchange information and offer emotional support.

Prior to the adoption of these interventions into primary care practice, investigators must know which is best. Rigorous comparative effectiveness research (CER) can help to determine this. This proposal will compare a HIT based intervention to a GV strategy, with and without the use of social media. These 3 interventions will be compared based not only on clinical measures of interest but also on parent-defined patient outcomes. Prior research has largely focused on measuring clinical outcomes such as treatment adherence and ADHD symptom reduction with little emphasis on understanding how patient-centered outcomes, such as the quality of life of families dealing with ADHD, are affected.

Building on previous work, the specific aims for this study are:

Aim 1. Compare the preliminary efficacy of three interventions to improve treatment of ADHD in the primary care setting Aim 1a) Compare the effectiveness of the three interventions on clinical measures such as parent and teacher rated ADHD symptoms and adaptive functioning Aim 1b) Compare the effectiveness of the three interventions on patient-centered outcomes such as quality of life and parental satisfaction with the intervention The three interventions will be: 1) Child Health Improvement through Computer Automation (CHICA) which is the health information technology innovation arm; 2) Group visits (GV); or 3) Group visits plus online discussion portal (GV+DP).