# Development of a Telehealth Screener and Assessment for Infants at-risk for ASD in Diverse Communities.

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT DAVIS · 2020 · $196,250

## Abstract

Project Summary
The overall goal of this proposal is to develop a telehealth procedure for screening infants 6-12
months of age for early autism spectrum disorder (ASD) symptoms. While some promising
biomarkers have been identified for infants in this age range, neurobiological methods are not
feasible for widespread implementation, especially in rural and low-resource service systems.
Families with early concerns are faced with long waitlists for an evaluation and often must travel
long distances for evaluations at centers with appropriate expertise. Telehealth has been used
as a cost-effective approach for increasing access to services across many disciplines, and
there is some initial use of telehealth treatment approaches in ASD, but there are currently no
established telehealth screening procedures to screen infants for ASD. Developing a telehealth
screening protocol would provide families an opportunity to access highly trained clinicians and
researchers with specialized expertise for initial screening before undertaking the cost and effort
required to travel to a center. The first six months of funding will be used to develop, refine, and
pilot test this parent-administered protocol in a sample of diverse infants 6-12 months (Aim 1).
Feedback from parents and experts will inform final adaptations. The resulting protocol will
subsequently be tested via telehealth in a pilot feasibility phase (Aim 2). 30 infants 6-12 months
with early ASD symptoms and their caregivers will be recruited nationally, and will complete the
telehealth screener quarterly for one year. We will examine the reliability of telehealth-derived
measures of infant behavior across consecutive administrations, and compare these measures
to existing parent-report measures to assess their validity. Acceptability to parents and feasibility
of this telehealth approach to screening will also be evaluated. The overall goal of this project is
to develop a protocol for systematically screening, assessing, and monitoring symptomatic
infants from a distance. Doing so will increase families' access to specialized evaluations and
decrease the significant waiting time between parents' first concerns and infants' first
evaluation. It will also lay the groundwork for future efforts to conduct screening and intervention
trials and will ultimately help to increase access to high-quality interventions and improve the
developmental outcomes of many more underserved children with ASD.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10024067
- **Project number:** 5R21HD100372-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT DAVIS
- **Principal Investigator:** Meagan Ruth Talbott
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $196,250
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-30 → 2022-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10024067

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10024067, Development of a Telehealth Screener and Assessment for Infants at-risk for ASD in Diverse Communities. (5R21HD100372-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10024067. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*