Talk With Me Baby: Leveraging Well-Child Care to Enhance the Early Home Language Environment

Conditions

• Child Language
• Developmental Milestones
• Language Delay

Eligibility Criteria

Sex

ALL

Age

1 Day - 2 Years

Healthy Volunteers

Not accepted

Interventions

• Patients in Talk With Me Baby Clinics — BEHAVIORAL
  Parent-child participants in TWMB clinics will attend their regular WCC visits (scheduled per routine clinic processes) following the AAP Periodicity Schedule.
• Patients in Care-As-Usual Clinics — BEHAVIORAL
  Parent-child participants in Care-As-Usual clinics will attend their regular WCC visits (scheduled per routine clinic processes) following the AAP Periodicity Schedule. Measures will be completed at five time points.

Study Details

Language-rich interactions with a parent or caregiver can serve as a protective factor for young children, by supporting their language development and other positive long-term outcomes, but existing interventions have not had the necessary reach to families who need this information the most. This study utilizes the primary care setting as a low cost, scalable way to deliver language promotion intervention. Specifically, we will test the effectiveness and explore implementation of language promotion intervention (Talk With Me Baby) that embeds within anticipatory guidance during pediatric well-child care to boost early language development and optimize health, academic, and economic outcomes.

Key Dates

Start date

Feb 5, 2026

Status verified

Mar 2026

Primary completion

Mar 31, 2029

Completion

Jun 30, 2029

Study Design

Enrollment

400 participants (estimated)

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Intervention model

PARALLEL

Primary purpose

TREATMENT

Arms

• Experimental: Talk With Me Baby Clinics
  In TWMB clinics, TWMB will be delivered within usual WCC workflows for anticipatory guidance during the clinical encounter. TWMB is delivered by the primary clinician (i.e., pediatrician/family medicine physician; physician assistant; nurse practitioner) and/or a clinician and care team. TWMB targets key evidence-based language promotion strategies that previous research has shown to improve child language outcomes. TWMB training involves didactic and practice-based instruction (CME/CNE) that includes: (a) a brief review of the science behind why language promotion matters; (b) focused instruction (with video examples and modeling) on how to deliver components of TWMB, including the TWMB Checklist and Language Nutrition Prescription; and (c) live practice and role play with the trainer on delivering TWMB across child ages and families.
• Active Comparator: Care-As-Usual Clinics
  Providers/care teams will deliver care-as-usual WCC visits for all children. Parent-child participants in Control clinics will receive WCC anticipatory guidance care as usual. No treatment control is in line with the literature on randomized behavioral/educational interventions.

Primary Outcome Measure

Change in parent language-promotion behavior [ Time Frame: Child age 1, 6, 12, and 18 months old ]

Central Contacts

• Brenda J Salley, PhD
  913-945-7944
  [email protected]

Locations (2)

Find similar trials in Atlanta, GA

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