Project V Summary Consistent with RFA HD-23-022, Project V will examine the efficacy of engagement approaches to meet the needs of children with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) and their families. Currently, there are significant practical challenges in youth with SLDs accessing initial neuropsychological assessments, barriers to pursuing services and supports even when youth do receive assessment, and high levels of anxiety in youth with SLDs that remain unaddressed by extant evidence-based interventions. The goal of Project V is to work bidirectionally with families and community stakeholders to develop, implement, and evaluate efforts to best support the assessment and intervention needs of children with SLDs and related disorders. Project V proposes two related aims. Aim 1 will examine the experiences of families during neuropsychological assessments, as well as one year later in order to assess acceptability and feasibility of assessment recommendations, including barriers to pursuit of services (N=600). Both quantitative and qualitative methods will be used, with multi-method analyses to examine experiences, barriers, and service use as predicting short- and long-term outcomes for youth with SLDs. To address the unmet needs of youth with SLDs and co-occurring anxiety, Aim 2 will test the feasibility, acceptability, and initial efficacy of a brief six-session, group-based anxiety intervention tailored to youth with SLDs (N=80). The intervention will be adapted from the well-elaborated youth anxiety treatment literature and preliminary studies of anxiety treatment in the SLD context. A time-varying multiple baseline design will be used so that youth are their own controls and all eligible youth have intervention access (as opposed to a no-treatment or usual care control). Both aims will utilize focus groups to obtain qualitative data on family experiences to improve the assessment and recommendations process (Aim 1) and to iteratively improve the anxiety intervention (Aim 2). Together, these aims will address the primary unmet needs we have identified across SLD assessment and intervention, including barriers to accessing evidence-based neuropsychological assessments and implementing resulting recommendations, and a lack of mental health interventions that address the specific needs of youth with SLDs. Both aims include explicit opportunities for bidirectional engagement between the research team and families, consistent with principles of community-engaged research.