Procedure for early identification of disorders in children's language

Abstract

It is important for health professionals to have the knowledge about the prevalence, incidence, and risk factors for a particular disease in the community in order to allocate sufficient resources to handle the problems associated with such disease. The surveys are instruments used as subsidies for formulating and evaluating public policy, becoming increasing its use in several countries as a support tool in planning health. Objectives: To develop a protocol to identify children with possible communication disorder. This protocol will be used in the Family Health Program; to train Community Health Agents (CHA) to use the protocol; to apply the protocol in primary care units, nurseries and schools in the region covered by the study; to monitor and / or evaluate all children who are at risk for communication disorder; to establish the specificity and sensitivity oh the instrument. Method: This study will be initially developed with 500 children belonging to the microregion Butantã/Jaguaré and served by the Basic Health Units of the Jardim São Jorge e Eng. Guilherme Henrique Pinto Coelho (Vila Dalva), and Centro de Saúde Escola Samuel B. Pessoa (Butantã), where a Family Health Strategy is already established. Children will be divided in seven groups, according to the age-range and scale of language development as determined by the ASHA (2006). Questionnaires will be applied with parents or guardians. According to the obtained responses, the children will leave for monitoring and/or a complete speech and hearing evaluation. Subsequently, the speech and hearing evaluations will be compared with the responses obtained in the protocols to establish the sensitivity of this instrument. (AU)