Early Intervention for Preterm Infants

The first aim is to develop a clinic-based intervention program and a home-based intervention program for VLBW preterm infants that have common intervention services but are respectively delivered at clinic and home. The interventions are comprehensive that combine child- and parent-focused services including health and feeding consultation, education of child development skills, intervention of mother-infant interaction, and parent support. The eleven-session interventions are intensive that begin in hospitalization and end at 12 months of corrected age. The clinical feasibility and usefulness of implementing these intervention programs within the context of randomized intervention study subject to the existing constraints of the hospital and home settings will be tested in a pilot study. The second aim is to conduct a randomized control trial to examine the costs and effectiveness of the UCP, the CBIP, and the HBIP for VLBW preterm infants. Gender and socio-economically matched normal full-term infants will also be included as a comparison group. Outcome measures that include child, parenting, and transactions outcomes will be compared between groups. Child outcome measures will include health status, growth, neurodevelopment, and neurosensory status; parenting outcome measures will include maternal parenting competence, social support, and psychological stress; transactions outcome measure will be mother-infant interaction. Costs (direct and indirect costs) associated with each early intervention program during the follow-up period will be estimated. Average and incremental cost/effectiveness ratio will be calculated to determine which early intervention program is most cost-effective for VLBW preterm infants.