Publications by authors named "Dustin E Sarver"

Child-Adult Relationship Enhancement (CARE) is an evidence-informed approach to promote positive child-adult relationships in youth with behavior problems or traumatic stress. Implementing CARE in community settings may extend accessibility to evidence-based practices (EBP) for children in underserved areas. The present study examined health professionals' perceptions of CARE.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Understanding caregiver willingness to participate in pediatric clinical research is needed. We examined caregiver perceptions of pediatric clinical research during COVID-19 and examined research attitudes and sociodemographic factors as predictors of willingness.

Methods: A cross-sectional telephone survey was administered to caregivers of children from August 2020 to April 2021.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Researchers need to find out what factors might put babies at risk of being taken out of their homes, especially due to their parents' substance use.
  • In a study with 1,808 parent-baby pairs, most of the parents were Non-Hispanic White, and many babies were exposed to drugs like alcohol and opioids before birth.
  • The study found that many babies with drug exposure didn't get to go home with their parents, and understanding how substance use affects placement decisions can help improve support for families in need.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Genetic research can help advance our knowledge of autism and positively impact the progress of care for individuals with autism. Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Black participants remain significantly underrepresented in genetic research in autism in the United States, including nationwide, multisite, genetic consortiums like Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research for Knowledge (SPARK). Few studies have explored the unique motivators and barriers that influence participation in genetics research across underrepresented groups with autism and strategies to increase participation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Research provides support for the associated risk of inadequate sleep duration, limited physical activity, and excessive media use in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obesity. The present study aims to (1) examine the association between ADHD and overweight or obese status (OW/OB); (2) comprehensively examine sleep duration, physical activity, and media use as potential moderators of OW/OB; and (3) examine the moderating effects of these health behaviors cross-sectionally by comparing medicated youth with ADHD, unmedicated youth with ADHD, and youth without ADHD.

Methods: Data were acquired from the 2018 and 2019 National Survey of Children's Health, a nationally representative survey of caregivers conducted across the United States.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Given the substantial increase in pediatric obesity rates in recent decades, its long-term stability, and its pervasive negative outcomes, continuous efforts to identify factors that may place children at increased risk for overweight or obesity (OW/OB) are essential. As such, the primary aim of the present investigation was to examine the extent to which symptoms of Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome (CDS; i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Clinical trials play a crucial role in advancing medical knowledge and improving health outcomes. However, there is a recognized need for greater representation of marginalized groups to ensure that research findings can be generalized and effectively applied to all individuals. While the Pediatric Research Participation Questionnaire (PRPQ) was developed to assist pediatric clinical trials research by identifying benefits and barriers to research participation among children with chronic medical conditions, there is still limited insight into the structure of the PRPQ when administered in diverse samples, including the general pediatric population.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The COVID-19 pandemic led to increased mental health concerns among parents. Emerging studies have shown links between COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and psychological distress, including among parents. The primary aim of this study was to extend these emerging findings by examining the role of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in mental health functioning in a national sample of U.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the lives of children and their caregivers. Recent research has examined the impact of the pandemic on child and caregiver functioning but there is a paucity of work examining the impact of the pandemic on the broader family system. The current study examined family resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic across three aims: Aim 1 tested whether meaning, control, and emotion systems form a unitary family adaption factor, Aim 2 evaluated a concurrent model of family resilience, and Aim 3 examined whether parent gender and vaccination status moderated paths in the final model.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a salient risk factor for a myriad of negative outcomes. Extant theoretical and empirical models traditionally quantify the impact of ACEs using cumulative representations. Recent conceptualizations challenge this framework and theorize that the types of ACEs children are exposed to differentially impacts their future functioning.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Assessing cognitive development is critical in clinical research of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, collecting cognitive data from clinically administered assessments can add a significant burden to clinical research in ASD due to the substantial cost and time required, and it is often prohibitive in large-scale studies. There is a need for more efficient, but reliable, methods to estimate cognitive functioning for researchers, clinicians, and families.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * The study analyzed data from over 41,000 children aged 6-17, revealing that both ADHD and ODD/CD are associated with increased caregiver stress, while adequate sleep is linked to lower stress.
  • * Notably, children with both ADHD and ODD/CD do not show significantly higher caregiver stress than those with ODD/CD alone, and female children with ADHD may experience unique interactions with sleep affecting stress levels.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated differences related to employment and family psychological health. However, empirical evidence examining COVID-19-linked differences concerning children and families remains scant. This study addresses this gap by examining sociodemographic differences associated with COVID-19 on family access to resources and family psychological health.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Developmental and behavioral problems are prevalent in early childhood, whereas the workforce available to identify and address early problems is comparatively limited. Beyond workforce shortages, additional barriers to developing and training a highly skilled workforce in this area exist-particularly in rural, high-need, and underserved U.S.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Children who experience maltreatment are at elevated risk of developing mental health difficulties. Even so, they often do not receive timely, evidenced-based mental health treatment, which may exacerbate the risk of poor outcomes. This study aims to describe the receipt of timely follow-up care after maltreatment in a southern state with known treatment shortages and aims to identify factors associated with timely follow-up care.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased mental health concerns, including depression and anxiety among parents and internalizing and externalizing problems among youth. To better understand the mechanisms and moderators of child mental health during the pandemic, the current study tested two moderated mediation models in which parent depression and anxiety indirectly impacted child internalizing and externalizing problems through negative effects on multiple parenting variables, with these associations moderated by families' exposure to COVID-19-stressors. A national sample representative of U.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates how children with ADHD perform on visuospatial working memory (VS-WM) tasks compared to typically developing (TD) children, particularly looking at the impact of varying task parameters.
  • - Results show that both groups struggle with longer paths, but TD children are more affected by increasing path crossings compared to those with ADHD.
  • - The findings suggest that children use dynamic rehearsal strategies for VS information and indicate that ADHD-related deficits are particularly problematic when tasks involve long path lengths.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Pediatric Mental Health Care Access (PMHCA) programs increase access to mental health care by providing training, consultation, and resource-referral support to primary care providers (PCPs). The authors compared trends in services provided by two PMHCA programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: Maryland and Mississippi PMHCA programs had 2,840 contacts with PCPs from January 2019 to March 2021.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Clinical presentations of ADHD vary according to biological and environmental developmental influences. An emerging field of research has demonstrated relationships between exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and ADHD prevalence, particularly in high-risk samples. However, research examining the combined role of traditional risk factors of ADHD and ACEs is limited, and reliance on high-risk samples introduces sampling bias.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Recent studies demonstrate that working memory (WM) is integral to etiological models of ADHD; however, significant questions persist regarding the relation between WM performance across tasks with varying cognitive demands and ADHD symptoms. The current study incorporates an individual differences approach to WM heterogeneity (i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) confers elevated risk for automobile crashes, both as a clinical syndrome and continuously when examining risk as a function of symptom severity. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms and processes underlying this risk remain poorly understood. The current longitudinal study examined whether attention network components reflect neurocognitive pathways linking ADHD symptoms with adverse driving outcomes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Pediatric patients with hematology and oncology conditions often experience disease- and treatment-related neurocognitive deficits. Well-validated screening tools are critical for identifying patients experiencing cognitive impairments. The Pediatric Applied Cognition scale (PAC) Short Form, developed by the National Institutes of Health, assesses attention and memory concerns.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study aimed to identify the impact of neurocognitive functioning on academic and psychological domains using a novel person-centered latent profile analysis approach. We further examined the contribution of identified risk factors (e.g.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Sluggish cognitive tempo refers to a constellation of symptoms that include slowed behavior/thinking, reduced alertness, and getting lost in one's thoughts. Despite the moniker "sluggish cognitive tempo," the evidence is mixed regarding the extent to which it is associated globally with slowed (sluggish) mental (cognitive) information processing speed (tempo).

Method: A well-characterized clinical sample of 132 children ages 8-13 years (M = 10.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF