**Forthcoming in Progress in Community Health Partnerships (PCHP) 20.3. All rights reserved.**
ABSTRACT
Autism core characteristics and sensory processing differences can create significant barriers to families accessing and children receiving emergency healthcare in the heightened sensory and fast-paced environment of emergency departments, particularly in rural communities. This project aimed to use a community-collaborative approach to develop and disseminate educational materials, recommend emergency department environmental modifications, and implement sensory regulation supports to enhance the capacity of healthcare providers and staff in supporting autistic children within rural emergency department settings. An interdisciplinary community-academic partnership team including researchers, graduate students, parents, an autistic focused organization, healthcare providers, and hospital staff used an iterative process to co-create materials. The collaboration yielded a multi-faceted toolkit with high acceptability from health care team members. The toolkit products included educational materials, environmental adaptations, and sensory-friendly tools. Future research should explore toolkit modifications to allow for implementation across unique emergency department contexts and assess healthcare related outcomes to measure toolkit effectiveness.