A faculty team representing the TRIAD Global Collaborative traveled to Vietnam in September to offer training to providers and educators regarding evidence-based practices and care models for autistic children and their families. The visit built off an existing collaboration –- initiated in 2019 — with the Project Vietnam Foundation, a California based non-profit dedicated to improving health care for children in Vietnam.
Initially, this collaboration focused on training Vietnamese providers in the early identification of autism utilizing the Vanderbilt-developed Screening Tool for Autism in Toddlers (STAT). With extensive cultural adaptation and translation, the tool was deployed through a train-the-trainer model designed to build national capacity.
Given the success of this initial groundwork, the TRIAD team saw an opportunity to potentially further cultural and professional exchange to potentially yield even more powerful training and capacity building programs.
The training team consisted of Zachary Warren, Ph.D., TRIAD executive director; Pablo Juárez, M.Ed., BCBA, LBA, TRIAD co-director; Amy Swanson, M.A, CCRP, director of TRIAD Clinical Trial Operations; and TRIAD psychologists Alexa Dixon, Ph.D., and associate director of early intervention outcomes; Joe Graham, Ph.D., assistant professor of pediatrics; and Danielle Buse, BCBA, TRIAD behavior analyst.
Alexa Dixon, Ph.D.
“Similar to barriers here in the U.S., Vietnam also faces provider shortages and limitations with time and resources,” said Alexa Dixon. “In the U.S., children have regularly scheduled well-child visits with their pediatricians to monitor their developmental progress and milestones. This type of universal recommended screening does not exist within the medical system in Vietnam, and pediatricians are often only seeing children and families for sick visits.”
The team also learned that one of the biggest differences between the U.S. and Vietnam in service delivery is how schools triage services for students in need of support.
Joe Graham, Ph.D.
“In the U.S., frameworks like response-to-intervention and multi-tiered systems of support are used in school systems that provide a continuum of support to promote student success,” said Joe Graham. “For example, all students receive universal or core instructions. However, some students may require extra assistance to support their success, which can be provided through targeted small-group interventions. If students do not make sufficient progress with universal and targeted supports, they may need more intensive, individualized instruction to help them succeed.”
Graham said, “A major goal of this trip was to build and connect a community among practitioners working with autistic individuals across medical and school settings throughout the country. We traveled to two major municipalities–Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City–to meet medical providers, educators, school leaders, professors, caregivers, and advocates about Vietnam’s current frameworks for evaluating and providing supports for their autistic community as well as the unique barriers and challenges they experience.”
To meet these needs, TRIAD’s aim was to share useful, evidence-based tools and strategies across medical and educational settings. Given some of the barriers families faced to travel to their regional hospital for an autism evaluation, the team introduced the TELE-ASD-PEDS (TAP) tool, which is a telehealth assessment tool for autism that has been successfully deployed nationally.
Another goal was to assess current needs and systemic challenges that Vietnamese providers and families encounter to better understand how TRIAD may be able to continue to provide consultation, supports, and training to build partnership and global learning communities.
The team toured Ho Chi Minh City’s Children’s Hospitals 1 and 2, multiple schools, and the Hanoi National University of Education’s Special Education program, with opportunities for learning and sharing on the parts of the Americans as well as the Vietnamese in each of these settings. This included dialogue regarding the concept of neurodiversity across cultural settings.
“Throughout the past decade TRIAD faculty and staff have responded to various international invitations to provide formal training and consultation related to autism,” Swanson said. “Some have developed into ongoing partnerships and yielded programs or professional competencies with long-term impact. Others have resulted in short-term exchanges to share knowledge and learn from others working in different settings from our own.”
These efforts have led to the creation of the TRIAD Global Collaborative, an initiative designed to provide a framework for future international collaborations of meaning. Specifically, involved team members are indexing prior international projects, showcasing successful models for capacity building in Tennessee and nationally, in order to better connect with communities where there could be powerful scientific and advocacy opportunities over time.
Pictured top of page: Members of the TRIAD Global Collaborative team meet with colleagues in Vietnam at one of the preschools the team visited.
