Children and telehealth: Not as simple as giving away tablets

To the Editor,

While we appreciate the cultural context in provision of services, and certainly in terms of uptake of TH, we are unsure whether the information presented in the letter adds measurably to that discussion. It is nice to see complementary data and clinical services applying data frames to their clinical work; however, ​the letter describes without detail numbers from a relatively small sampling, with no description of methods or what the numbers mean. Moreover, the follow‐up survey of technology access in this cultural cohort is interesting but lacks any rigor as to sampling, method, analysis, or context. We would welcome it being developed into a full study which may have interest for this cultural system. The conclusion, roughly stated, “if they just had devices the uptake of TH would be large,” may or may not be true, but lacks nuance especially given the cultural context, namely: a cohort ​unique in both its attitudes toward technology and toward COVID‐19 [1, 2]. We note in our paper [3] that TH included primarily telephonic sessions (70%), not just video, which undermines the point of the letter. Of further note, while not described in the paper, tablets and laptops with Internet were offered to this cohort during the pandemic but telephone was much preferred. ​Finally, while the issue of culture is important to our paper, we specifically note its ubiquity to all segments of the analyzed data. The phenomena of in‐person preference among child clients and providers was consistent across groups in our study with both Chasidic and non‐Chasidic groups demonstrating this child in‐person preference.