The unintended consequences of COVID-19 public health measures on health care for children with medical complexity.

AIM: The aim of this work is to explore the unintended consequences of pandemic public health measures on health care service usage by children with medical complexity. BACKGROUND: Medical complexity is characterized by the presence of complex, chronic conditions requiring specialized care, substantial health needs, functional dependence and/or limitations, and frequent health care usage. Children with medical complexity are among the highest users of paediatric health care services. METHODS: A web-based, cross-sectional survey was conducted in British Columbia, Canada, between August and September 2020. Inclusion criteria were (a) parent/guardian of at least one child (age 0 to 18 years, inclusive) with medical complexity and (b) residence in British Columbia. A convenience sample of 156 parents completed the survey. Data were analysed using a series of descriptive analyses (frequencies, cross-tabulations) and inferential analyses (binary logistic regressions). RESULTS: Respondents provided information for 188 children with medical complexity. Access to allied health therapies (physio, occupational, and speech and language) and medical specialists drastically declined in the initial months of the pandemic, with a shift from in-person to virtual platforms for these aspects of care. Regression modelling indicated that age and family structure influenced decisions to use in-patient hospital services. CONCLUSIONS: Public health measures implemented in the initial months of the pandemic decreased access to health care services for children with medical complexity. The long-term ramifications of these measures are unknown. Family structure was found to influence decisions to avoid accessing Emergency Department care. Given the volume of services used by these children, paediatric hospital leaders need to take their unique needs into consideration in disaster planning to ensure minimal disruptions in care.

Community lives of adolescents across multiple special needs: Discrimination, community belonging, trusted people, leisure activities, and friends.

We sought to gain insights into the community lives, experiences, and activities of adolescents across multiple categories of special needs. Specifically, we: explored the particular aspects of their lives adolescents felt elicited discrimination; determined whether adolescents feel a sense of community belongingness, as well as the categories of people whom adolescents approach when help is needed; and detailed the leisure activities respondents undertake and with which frequency, in addition to the quantity of friendships they have. We performed assorted descriptive analyses of the McCreary Centre Society's 2013 British Columbia Adolescent Health Survey (BCAHS) database. We found tremendous variation in the survey responses of adolescents, both within and between special needs categories, highlighting the importance of such exploratory analyses. This paper provides inductive population-based evidence to inform theories about the community lives of adolescents with special needs, as well as to guide programs and policies targeting such youth.

Early experiences matter: lasting effect of concentrated disadvantage on children's language and cognitive outcomes.

A small but provocative literature suggests that neighbourhood socioeconomic conditions experienced by children early in life influence a variety of health and developmental outcomes later in life. We contribute to this literature by testing the degree to which neighbourhood socioeconomic conditions that children experience in Kindergarten influence their later language and cognitive outcomes in early adolescence, over and above current neighbourhood context and various child-level covariates including scores on a Kindergarten measure of school readiness. Cross-classified random effects modelling (CCREM) analyses were performed on a study population of 2648 urban children residing throughout the province of British Columbia, Canada, who were followed longitudinally from Kindergarten (age 5/6) to Grade 7 (age 12/13). Findings demonstrate that neighbourhood concentrated disadvantage experienced during Kindergarten has a durable, negative effect on children's reading comprehension outcomes seven years later-providing evidence that early social contextual experiences play a critical role in the lives of children. Possible explanations and future directions are discussed.

Concentrated affluence, concentrated disadvantage, and children's readiness for school: a population-based, multi-level investigation.

A number of studies demonstrates a relationship between neighbourhood concentration of affluence and disadvantage and the health and development of its residents. We contribute to this literature by testing hypotheses about the relationship between neighbourhood-level concentrated affluence/disadvantage and child-level developmental outcomes in a study population of 37,798 Kindergarten children residing in 433 neighbourhoods throughout the province of British Columbia, Canada. We utilise a previously-validated measure of neighbourhood socioeconomic composition--the Index of Concentration at the Extremes (ICE)--which not only allows for more precise estimation of the competing influences of concentrated affluence and disadvantage, but also facilitates examination of the potential impact of neighbourhood-level income inequality. Our findings show that increases in neighbourhood affluence are associated with increases in children's scores on the Early Development Instrument (EDI), a holistic measure of Kindergarteners' readiness for school. Particularly noteworthy is that, for four of the five EDI scales (physical, social, emotional, and communication) and the total score, results indicate a significant curvilinear relationship--whereby the highest average child-level outcomes are not found in locations with the highest concentrations of affluence, but rather in locations with relatively equal proportions of affluent and disadvantaged families. This finding suggests, first, that concentrated affluence may have diminishing rates of return on contributing to enhanced child development, and, second, that children residing in mixed-income neighbourhoods may benefit both from the presence of affluent residents and from the presence of services and institutions aimed at assisting lower-income residents. Implications and future directions are discussed.

From Kindergarten readiness to fourth-grade assessment: longitudinal analysis with linked population data.

Early child development (ECD)--the development of physical, social-emotional, and language-cognitive capacities in the early years--is a foundation of health, well-being, learning, and behaviour across the life course. Consequently, the capacity to monitor ECD is an important facet of a modern society. This capacity is achieved by having in place an ongoing flow of high-quality information on the state of early child development, its determinants, and long-term developmental outcomes. Accordingly, there remains a considerable need for research that merges community-centred, longitudinal, and linked-data approaches to monitoring child development. The current paper addresses this need by introducing one method of summarising and quantifying the developmental trajectories of British Columbian children at the neighbourhood- or district-level: computing the Community Index of Child Development (CICD) for each geographic area. A simple index that describes change in children's developmental trajectories at the aggregate level, the CICD is computable because of our capacity to conduct individual-level linkage of two population data sets: the Early Development Instrument (EDI), a holistic measure of children's readiness for school which is administered at Kindergarten, and the British Columbia Ministry of Education's Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA), a Grade 4 measure of academic skills. In this paper, we demonstrate: (a) wide variation in the CICDs according to the children's district of residence in Kindergarten; (b) an association of the CICDs with an indicator of the socioeconomic character of the neighbourhoods; and (c) contrasting patterns of neighbourhood convergence and divergence in two different school districts--such that, in some areas, children from high vulnerability neighbourhoods tend to catch up between Kindergarten and Grade 4 whereas, in other areas, they tend to fall further behind.

Trends in autism prevalence: diagnostic substitution revisited.

There has been little evidence to support the hypothesis that diagnostic substitution may contribute to increases in the administrative prevalence of autism. We examined trends in assignment of special education codes to British Columbia (BC) school children who had an autism code in at least 1 year between 1996 and 2004, inclusive. The proportion of children with an autism code increased from 12.3/10,000 in 1996 to 43.1/10,000 in 2004; 51.9% of this increase was attributable to children switching from another special education classification to autism (16.0/10,000). Taking into account the reverse situation (children with an autism code switching to another special education category (5.9/10.000)), diagnostic substitution accounted for at least one-third of the increase in autism prevalence over the study period.

Trends in special education code assignment for autism: implications for prevalence estimates.

There is considerable controversy over reasons for observed increases in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders. We examined trends in British Columbia education database coding of children with autism from 1996 to 2004. There was a significant linear increase in autism prevalence. The proportion of children identified by age 6 increased significantly from 1996 to 1999. When we calculated prevalence assuming onset prior to age 3, previously unidentified cases, particularly among girls in 1996 and 1997, accounted for substantial increases in estimated prevalence. The magnitude of under-identification decreased from 1996 to 2000, and rose slightly in 2001. Analyses of prevalence trends must take into account effects of earlier age at identification and inclusion of previously undetected cases on prevalence estimates.

Performing movement sequences with knowledge of results under different visual conditions in adults with Down syndrome.

The purpose of this study was to examine the learning of movement sequences in individuals with Down syndrome under different visual information conditions. 10 adults with Down syndrome and 14 neurologically typical adults performed a sequence of movements under two different visual information conditions: full visual feedback of the limb and environment and no visual feedback of the limb. Participants were given knowledge of results of their total movement time after each trial. The entire task was presented as a game and movement time information was given as a "score" after each trial. Participants were also given verbal encouragement throughout the task. As expected, individuals with Down syndrome had significantly slower reaction and movement times than neurologically typical participants. Interestingly, however, mean reaction and movement time was not affected by the visual condition, in either group. Participants with Down syndrome improved their performance over the presented trials, in both visual information conditions. These findings indicate that providing knowledge of results of movement performance can facilitate the performance and coordination of movement sequences even under conditions where visual information of the moving limb is restricted.