Conducting a Community Engagement Studio to Adapt Enhanced Milieu Teaching

A group of women sit in a circle and speak with each other.
Photo by SHVETS production for Pexels

What is the name of the article?

Conducting a Community Engagement Studio to Adapt Enhanced Milieu Teaching

What was the goal of this study?

To get feedback for a future research study that would use telehealth for EMT to families in rural Oregon counties.

What did we find?

In this Community Engagement Studio, the research team heard from 11 family members in three counties. They talked about past times the families had services to help their kids learn to talk.

What did we learn?

This led to four changes in the how the next research study went. They were more time options, text message reminders, the use of graphs to show how well the kids were learning, and parents had a choice of how to get more information to support their use of EMT.

Why is this important?

These kinds of changes can make a big impact. The community can help shape how the research is done in a way that better meets their needs. This can make the research more useful.

Who participated in the study?

11 caregivers that are representative of rural Oregon's demographics (2020 census data) participated in this study. They were mostly white women from rural Oregon between the ages of 25 and 40 years old. Just over half (55%) were on the Oregon Health Plan, over a third (36%) had private insurance, and 9% did not say.

For more details about study participants, please see the full text article.

Who are the authors of the study?

Emily D. Quinn,1 Kathleen Cotter,1 Kim Kurin,1 and Kim Brown2

Authors are from: 1. Institute on Development and Disability, OHSU; 2. Oregon Clinical and Translational Research Institute, OHSU

Quinn, E. D., Cotter, K., Kurin, K., & Brown, K. (2022). Conducting a Community Engagement Studio to Adapt Enhanced Milieu Teaching. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 31(3), 1095-1113. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-21-00100

Key Words:

Community Engagement Studio: a new way to include people from the community in research. These studios help researchers and community members talk as equals. The goal is to make the research more helpful to the community.

EMT (Enhanced Milieu Teaching): a way to teach kids to talk by using their interests and actions as a chance to help them learn words and language.

Telehealth: having healthcare visits using video or phone meetings, instead of meeting in person.