 |
The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
|
The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Keith G. Scott, PhD and Marygrace E. Yale, PhD. Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Psychology Annex, PO Box 249229, Coral Gables, FL 33124, (305)284-1101, kscott@miami.edu
In cooperation with the Florida Department of Education and the Florida Department of Health we have, since 1992, been archiving school records for children attending public schools in Florida and their birth certificate records. Using modern informatics methods we have been able to store and to link the records under the most stringent requirements of confidentiality with a sensitivity and specificity of 97%. The software and hardware to do this has evolved with advances in technology. A comprehensive over-view of this effort to understand the need for special instructional programs followed the action of the 1999-2000 Florida Legislature that called for a report by the “Commission on Developmental Delays” on children in Florida. A report was prepared for the Commission for presentation to the Legislature. The Commission was concerned with a broad range of factors that place a child at risk for problems that interfere with normal progress in school including special education placement and an analysis of the distribution of risk conditions across the 67 counties in the State. Considering a broad spectrum of risk factors at birth including medical and socio-demographic factors, we concluded that the 2.2 million children 39% were at low risk, 45% were at moderate risk and 16% at high risk with four or more factors present. Great geographic variation was documented with high risk conditions being associated with from 4% to 34% of births in individual counties. An over-view of this report and detail data will be presented.
Learning Objectives: Learning Objectives Step 1 The participants will be presented with information that leads to an understanding of the major socio-demographic and birth risk factors that are associated with developmental delays in children at school age. The focus of the presentation is on mild and moderate problems that lead to difficulty with regular education programs. Step 2 The participants will be able to recognize the risk factors that lead to individual risk for school problems and identify risk factors those that have the largest impact on the need for services in the population. They will recognize the potential for using modern infomatics to analyze risk for developmental delays and define the need for services. Step
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.