The proposed project, entitled “Project STIRS: SLP Training to Improve Resilience in Students with Communication Disorders,” is intended to mitigate anxiety among early elementary students who have communication disorders by maximizing their social-emotional well-being. Communication disorders are speech and language impairments that interfere with a person’s ability to express themselves and/or comprehend others. Repeated communication breakdowns due to challenges with speech sound production, stuttering, vocal quality, vocabulary, grammar, and/or pragmatics can lead to feelings of frustration and anxiety about future interactions. In this two-year randomized controlled trial beginning in July 2022, the interdisciplinary research and advisory team will develop and deliver a case-based resilience training to school speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in four eastern Iowa AEAs. These trainings will focus on two domains of resilience that are rapidly developing and malleable during the early elementary years: self-awareness (e.g., growth mindset, self-efficacy) and self-management (e.g., emotion regulation, motivation). These two domains are of particular importance for maneuvering communicative adversity and within 5-8-year-olds’ zone of proximal development. Training effects will be evaluated using pre-/post-training measures administered to participating SLPs and a selection of their K-3 students who have IEPs focused on speech/language goals. The anticipated outcomes for the SLPs are improved awareness, knowledge, and competency of self-awareness and self-management needs and supports for students with communication disorders as measured immediately before and after the STIRS training. The K-3 students with communication disorders are expected to show improvements in therapy engagement, communication attitudes, and anxiety symptoms as measured immediately after training and three months later.

Schools play a crucial role in promoting and nurturing mental health of students, but little attention has been given to support the staff and teachers. The proposed study addresses this fundamental need by synergistically promoting staff and student well-being through the SWITCH (School Wellness Integration Targeting Child Health) initiative. The evidence-based SWITCH process has documented utility for building capacity in schools to promote healthy lifestyles in youth and it is delivered across the state through the distributed 4-H network coordinated by ISU Extension and Outreach program (www.iowaswitch.org). The SWITCH program currently incorporates training on social and emotional learning (SEL) as a resource to schools as they support students. In the proposed study, we will partner with the Iowa Healthiest State Initiative to expand our SEL work to include staff wellness programming integrating the ‘Make It OK’ community campaign to reduce stigma about mental illness. Building on 4-H expertise with positive youth development, we will also expand our youth ambassador model to build and test strategies to promote greater awareness and school-system change to support mental health programming in youth. The omnibus hypothesis is that mental health programming and wellness outcomes in youth can be enhanced when school staff are also supported. We will evaluate this hypothesis using established implementation science methods that have been used to develop and refine other elements of the existing SWITCH initiative. The key advantage of the project is that it provides an impactful, expandable and sustainable model to build capacity for schools to support mental health outcomes of both students and staff.