24-Month Outcomes of Primary Care Web-Based Depression Prevention Intervention in Adolescents: Randomized Clinical Trial.

BACKGROUND: Adolescent depression carries a high burden of disease worldwide, but access to care for this population is limited. Prevention is one solution to curtail the negative consequences of adolescent depression. Internet interventions to prevent adolescent depression can overcome barriers to access, but few studies examine long-term outcomes. OBJECTIVE: This study compares CATCH-IT (Competent Adulthood Transition with Cognitive Behavioral Humanistic and Interpersonal Training), an internet-based intervention, to a general health education active control for depression onset at 12 and 24 months in adolescents presenting to primary care settings. METHODS: A 2-site randomized trial, blinded to the principal investigators and assessors, was conducted comparing Competent Adulthood Transition with Cognitive Behavioral Humanistic and Interpersonal Training to health education to prevent depressive episodes in 369 adolescents (193 youths were randomly assigned to Competent Adulthood Transition with Cognitive Behavioral Humanistic and Interpersonal Training and 176 to health education) with subthreshold depressive symptoms or prior depressive episodes. Participants were recruited from primary care settings in the United States. The primary outcome was the occurrence of a depressive episode, determined by the Depression Symptom Rating. The secondary outcome was functioning, measured by the Global Assessment Scale. RESULTS: In intention-to-treat analyses, the adjusted hazard ratio favoring Competent Adulthood Transition with Cognitive Behavioral Humanistic and Interpersonal Training for first depressive episode was not statistically significant at 12 months (hazard ratio 0.77, 95% CI 0.42-1.40, P=.39) and 24 months (hazard ratio 0.87, 95% CI 0.52-1.47, P=.61). Competent Adulthood Transition with Cognitive Behavioral Humanistic and Interpersonal Training provided preventive benefit for first depressive episode for those with mild hopelessness or at least moderate paternal monitoring at baseline. Global Assessment Scale scores improved comparably in both groups (intention-to-treat). CONCLUSIONS: A technology-based intervention for adolescent depression prevention implemented in primary care did not have additional benefit at 12 or 24 months. Further research is necessary to determine whether internet interventions have long-term benefit. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01893749; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01893749.

Implementing an early childhood developmental screening and surveillance program in primary care settings: lessons learned from a project in Illinois.

Enhancing Developmentally Oriented Primary Care (EDOPC) is a project with a goal to increase the financing and delivery of preventive developmental services for children birth to age 3 years in the state of Illinois. Primary care providers have more opportunities to screen and observe infants and toddlers than any other professional, because they see them up to 13 times in the first 3 years of life for well-child visits. The project focused on using a 1-hour, on-site training for primary care providers and their entire office staff as the method of increasing knowledge, focusing on intent to change practice and implementation of routine early childhood developmental screening. Although many primary care providers routinely use only developmental surveillance in their practices, clinical practice guidelines recommend routine use of standardized developmental screening, using validated developmental screening tools. This article includes lessons learned and recommendations based on clinical practice guidelines and experiences of the team members during implementation of the EDOPC project. Primary care providers are critical to this process because children with developmental disorders have the best long-term outcomes and opportunities for improved family functioning with early detection, diagnosis, and treatment.

Enhancing developmentally oriented primary care: an Illinois initiative to increase developmental screening in medical homes.

In 2005, the Enhancing Developmentally Oriented Primary Care (EDOPC) project of the Illinois chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services began a project to improve the delivery and financing of preventive health and developmental services for children in Illinois. The leaders of this initiative sought to increase primary care providers' use of validated tools for developmental, social/emotional, maternal depression, and domestic violence screening and to increase early awareness of autism symptoms during pediatric well-child visits in children aged 0 to 3 years. These screenings facilitate identification of children at risk and those who need referral for further evaluation. Primary barriers to such screenings include lack of practitioner confidence in using validated screening tools. In this article we describe the accomplishments of the EDOPC project, which created training programs to address these barriers. This training is delivered by EDOPC staff and peer educators (physicians and nurse practitioners) in medical practices. The EDOPC project enhanced confidence and intent to screen among a large group of Illinois primary health care providers. Among a sample of primary care sites at which chart reviews were conducted, the EDOPC project increased developmental screening rates to the target of 85% of patients at most sites and increased social/emotional screening rates to the same target rate in nearly half of the participating practices.