Cultural Pride Reinforcement for Early School Readiness: Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of a Clinic-Based Intervention for Young African American Children

The project will recruit patients from AltaMed primary care clinics affiliated with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. It will pilot the Self-Concept Reinforcement for Early School Readiness (SCR4ESR) intervention, which provides self-concept themed children’s books and advice at health supervision visits for children aged 2-4 years. The specific aims are to assess the feasibility and acceptability of SCR4ESR among parents and providers, evaluate its capacity to improve self-concept reinforcement and book-sharing behaviors in parents, and evaluate its capacity to improve behavioral health and literacy in young African American children. The intervention will be refined based on qualitative interviews, and quantitative trial statistics (e.g., recruitment rate) will inform feasibility and acceptability. Structural equation modeling will be used to evaluate the mechanism by which SCR4ESR impacts behavioral health and literacy.