# RP-Villodas: Reducing Disparities in Access to Evidence-based Services for ADHD Through Technology

> **NIH NIH U54** · SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $377,355

## Abstract

RESEARCH PROJECT-VILLODAS-Project Summary
This Research Project (RP) aims to develop an adaptation of the Collaborative Life Skills Program (CLS) that
will be supported by mHealth technology. CLS is an evidence-based intervention for 2nd-5th grade children with
ADHD that is delivered in schools through coordinated efforts among school mental health providers, teachers,
and parents. School mental health providers are trained to coordinate evidence-based teacher- (i.e., Daily
Behavioral Report Card) and parent-mediated (i.e., Behavioral Parent Training) behavioral interventions, and
lead child social and organizational skills training groups. The adapted intervention, which integrates mHealth
technology (CLS-M), will improve the usability, feasibility, and acceptability of CLS in schools with limited
resources serving children from low-socioeconomic status (SES) and ethnic/racial minority (ERM) backgrounds,
reducing disparities in access to evidence-based ADHD interventions in these populations. Barriers to service
use in schools where low-SES and ERM families are most likely to receive services include logistical constraints
(e.g., time, transportation, childcare, work schedules), perceptual barriers (e.g., cultural mistrust, stigma,
perceived efficacy), and insufficient resources (e.g., staff, time, consultation support). Building on our prior
research, we will develop and test a fully functional web-based mHealth application to support CLS-M that
includes an integrated user portal for school mental health providers, teachers, and parents. It will also include
separate interfaces that support key features to facilitate each person’s role in CLS implementation at school or
at home, such as access to shared information about child assessments, goals, and automatically generated
graphs of child Daily Behavioral Report Card performance. Messaging features will facilitate communication
among school mental health providers, parents, and teachers, and calendar features that integrate with third-
party calendar applications (e.g., Google Calendar) will facilitate scheduling, meeting tracking, and sharing links
to third-party videoconferencing applications (e.g., Zoom). Based on stakeholder feedback from school
administrators, school mental health providers, teachers, and parents, we will work with mobile application
developers to design a fully functional web-based mHealth application prototype to support the CLS-M protocol.
We will then test and refine the prototype through a series of individual usability tests and an open feasibility trial.
We will also collect formative data from stakeholders in rural schools in Imperial County to inform future research
on adapting CLS-M for low-SES and ERM families served in this setting. Finally, we will conduct a Hybrid Type
I cluster randomized trial in 24 schools in a large urban school district, to evaluate whether CLS-M results in
acceptable implementation outcomes and improved child outcomes in comparison to ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 11002227
- **Project number:** 2U54MD012397-06A1
- **Recipient organization:** SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** MIGUEL T VILLODAS
- **Activity code:** U54 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $377,355
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2018-09-11 → 2029-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11002227

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 11002227, RP-Villodas: Reducing Disparities in Access to Evidence-based Services for ADHD Through Technology (2U54MD012397-06A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/11002227. Licensed CC0.

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