Accessibility of nutritional services for children with autism spectrum disorder in the United Arab Emirates: Insights from special education teachers and parents.
In the UAE, the nutrition roadblock is people, not price—families need autism-savvy dietitians and flexible services.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Opoku et al. (2023) talked to special-education teachers and parents in the United Arab Emirates. They asked what stops kids with autism from getting nutritional help.
The team used small group chats and one-on-one interviews. They wrote down every answer and looked for common themes.
What they found
Families said the big problems are not money or long drives. The real blocks are: few trained staff, services that feel unwelcoming, and schools that cannot bend.
Parents told stories of dietitians who had never worked with autistic kids. Teachers said they had no time to plan special meals.
How this fits with other research
Alrajhi et al. (2023) asked Saudi mothers the same open questions and heard the same tune: workforce and acceptability matter more than cost. This match is a conceptual replication across two Gulf neighbors.
Garwood et al. (2021) went to Mongolia and Sutton et al. (2022) to Ghana. Both studies extend the UAE picture to low-resource Asia and Africa. Parents on three continents list the same needs: more trained people and kinder services.
Alakhzami et al. (2023) reviewed Oman and saw identical staff shortages. The Gulf-wide echo shows the UAE data are not a one-off complaint.
Why it matters
If you serve autistic clients in the Gulf, stop blaming distance or fees. Push funders to train dietitians in autism-specific feeding issues and to write flexible meal plans schools can actually use. One quick win: share a short tip sheet with local clinics that lists common food aversions and simple swaps. This small step boosts acceptability while we wait for bigger workforce fixes.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Goal 2 of United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals exhorts countries to provide guidelines on better nutrition for all children. In response, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government designed a national nutrition framework to encourage better eating habits. However, large body of literature has reported that children with ASD are at high risks of malnutrition and poor eating habits. Yet, in the UAE and other contexts, there is limited research on accessibility of nutritional services to adults in the lives of children with ASD. AIMS: As parents and teachers spend the most time with children with ASD, this study sought to understand their perceptions of the availability of nutritional services for such children in the UAE. METHOD AND PROCEDURES: Penchansky and Thomas' (1981) health access theory served as the theoretical framework; its five tenets (geography, finance, accommodation, resources and acceptability) informed the design of a semi-structured interview guide. Data were collected from 21 participants, comprising 6 parents and 15 teachers of children with ASD. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Thematic analysis revealed that participants perceived accommodation, acceptability, and human resource availability as barriers to accessibility. However, geographical and financial accessibility were not identified as challenges. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The study calls for health policymakers to formalise nutritional services as an integrated part of the UAE health system, while also extending services to children with ASD. CONTRIBUTION: This study makes a substantial contribution to the literature. First, it addresses the needs for nutritional services for children with ASD. There is a limited body of knowledge on whether children with ASD have access to the requisite nutrition for development This study sheds light on an area that has received limited scholarly insight. Second, it adds to the usage of health access theory in studies on nutritional services for children with ASD.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2023 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2023.104521