Internet-based Interacting Together Everyday, Recovery After Childhood TBI (I-InTERACT): Protocol for a multi-site...

We discuss the rationale and description of the Internet-Based Interacting Together Everyday, Recovery After Childhood TBI (I-InTERACT), a telehealth intervention designed to promote positive parenting skills through live in-session skills practice and coaching. A second objective is to describe the protocol of a three-armed (Internet Resource Comparison, I-InTERACT, and I-InTERACT Express) multi-site randomized controlled trial (RCT) designed to examine intervention effectiveness.

Participants included parents of children ages 3-9 who sustained a moderate or severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) any time since birth. Measures assessing parenting behaviors, parent-child interaction, parent/family factors, and child factors were collected prior to intervention, 3 months after enrollment and 6-months after enrollment.

This protocol manuscript was submitted before the completion of data collection and prior to any data analysis. It is expected that the I-InTERACT and I-InTERACT Express interventions will be associated with an increase in positive parenting behaviors, and a decrease in negative parenting behaviors, parental distress, and child behavior problems. Finally it is expected that socioeconomic status, life stressors, and social resources will moderate treatment effects.

The study described in this protocol paper represents one of the first large multi-site RCTs of a parenting intervention designed to promote positive parenting skills in families with young children who sustained a TBI. We plan to disseminate findings to patients and families as well as clinical and research professionals, and begin to develop a research base for this telehealth intervention.