Community-Based, Caregiver-Implemented Early Language Intervention in High-Risk Families: Lessons Learned

Background: High-quality, early caregiver-child interaction facilitates language, cognitive, and health outcomes. Children in low socioeconomic status households experience less frequent and lower-quality language interactions on average than their middle to high socioeconomic status peers. Early caregiver-implemented intervention may help to improve outcomes for these children.

Objectives: This article describes how we used community-based participatory research (CBPR) to develop and implement a community-based, caregiver-implemented early language intervention, including the challenges, solutions, and lessons learned in the process of CBPR.

Methods: We adopted an ethnographic approach to document and analyze our CBPR experiences in multiple phases of the project, including intervention design, training, implementation, and evaluation.

Lessons Learned: Developing the CBPR partnership, co-designing and implementing the study, and managing systems- level concerns like obtaining funding were central challenges for the researcher–community team.

Conclusions: The CBPR model enhances early language intervention research by facilitating understanding of families in underserved communities and increasing the cultural relevancy of intervention materials.