Family Language Preference, Not Provider-Family Language Concordance, Predicts Integrated Psychology Treatment Engagement in a Spanish-English Bilingual Clinic.

OBJECTIVE: Monolingual Spanish speakers-many of whom identify as Hispanic/Latine-often experience barriers to accessing psychology services, including language access. Integrated primary care (IPC) clinics, where individuals receive psychological services within primary care, aim to improve service accessibility. However, minoritized populations are less likely to engage with these services than non-Hispanic/Latine White individuals. Few studies examine psychology treatment engagement within pediatric integrated clinics for Spanish-speaking families. This study investigated differences in psychology treatment engagement for Spanish-speaking families and the role of patient-provider language concordance within pediatric IPC. METHODS: A retrospective chart review examined data from a multiethnic sample of 887 patients (M age = 8.97 yrs, 55.69% male, 64.83% Hispanic/Latine, 6.99% non-Hispanic/Latine White, 41.71% Spanish-preferring) from an urban pediatric IPC clinic serving a high proportion of Hispanic/Latine, Spanish-speaking families. We examined the association between language preference and patient-provider language concordance on service engagement using hierarchical linear regression. RESULTS: Spanish-preferring families were more likely than English-preferring families to engage in psychology services. Working with a Spanish-speaking provider during an initial psychology visit was unrelated to psychology treatment engagement for Spanish-preferring families. CONCLUSION: Higher engagement for Spanish-preferring families seems to reflect the clinic's reputation as a center for linguistically accessible services. While linguistic accessibility remains important, our study did not detect an effect of language concordance during the initial psychology visit and subsequent treatment engagement. The findings highlight the importance of providing culturally responsive and linguistically accessible mental health services for Spanish-speaking families.

Latino parent involvement and associations with home literacy and oral reading fluency.

OBJECTIVE: Grounded in Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler's theoretical model of parents' motivations for involvement in their children's education, the aim of this study was to examine the associations between Latino parents' perceptions of involvement and the home literacy environment, as well as children's oral reading fluency (ORF). We further considered salient contextual factors (i.e., educational attainment, income status, and parent reading proficiency) that may impact parents' perceptions of involvement. METHOD: The sample included 730 young Latino children (Mage = 6.47, SD = 1.13; 49.9% male) and their caregivers attending summer camps that participated in a summer reading intervention program. Prior to intervention delivery, parents completed questionnaires regarding general family demography, parent perceptions of involvement, and the home literacy environment. Standardized curriculum-based measures of children's ORF were conducted by trained research staff. RESULTS: Results indicated that Latino parents' perceptions of involvement were associated with children's ORF and aspects of their home literacy involvement, even when accounting for parents' income, education level and self-reported reading proficiency. Regarding income status, families from higher income backgrounds perceived having more time and energy, and were more involved, as compared to families from lower income backgrounds. CONCLUSIONS: Findings from this study suggest that Latino parents' perceptions not only influence their home literacy involvement, but also their young children's ORF, even when accounting for contextual factors. Implications for practice and future directions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Quantitative autistic trait measurements index background genetic risk for ASD in Hispanic families.

BACKGROUND: Recent studies have indicated that quantitative autistic traits (QATs) of parents reflect inherited liabilities that may index background genetic risk for clinical autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in their offspring. Moreover, preferential mating for QATs has been observed as a potential factor in concentrating autistic liabilities in some families across generations. Heretofore, intergenerational studies of QATs have focused almost exclusively on Caucasian populations-the present study explored these phenomena in a well-characterized Hispanic population. METHODS: The present study examined QAT scores in siblings and parents of 83 Hispanic probands meeting research diagnostic criteria for ASD, and 64 non-ASD controls, using the Social Responsiveness Scale-2 (SRS-2). Ancestry of the probands was characterized by genotype, using information from 541,929 single nucleotide polymorphic markers. RESULTS: In families of Hispanic children with an ASD diagnosis, the pattern of quantitative trait correlations observed between ASD-affected children and their first-degree relatives (ICCs on the order of 0.20), between unaffected first-degree relatives in ASD-affected families (sibling/mother ICC = 0.36; sibling/father ICC = 0.53), and between spouses (mother/father ICC = 0.48) were in keeping with the influence of transmitted background genetic risk and strong preferential mating for variation in quantitative autistic trait burden. Results from analysis of ancestry-informative genetic markers among probands in this sample were consistent with that from other Hispanic populations. CONCLUSIONS: Quantitative autistic traits represent measurable indices of inherited liability to ASD in Hispanic families. The accumulation of autistic traits occurs within generations, between spouses, and across generations, among Hispanic families affected by ASD. The occurrence of preferential mating for QATs-the magnitude of which may vary across cultures-constitutes a mechanism by which background genetic liability for ASD can accumulate in a given family in successive generations.