Evaluating Racial Match and Concordance in ASD Interventions: Preliminary Findings from a Multidisciplinary Scoping Review

Racial and ethnic concordance, defined as a shared racial identity between providers and recipients, has demonstrated promise in improving engagement, communication, and outcomes across a range of relational care settings.However, its relevance to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) interventions remains underexplored.This scoping review examined how racial concordance has been studied across clinical, educational, and behavioral health contexts, and evaluated its potential applicability to ASD care.Following PRISMA-ScR guidelines, 20 peer-reviewed studies were identified through a systematic search of three databases (PsycINFO, PubMed, and ERIC), and thematically analyzed across three domains: social, behavioral, and biological/stress-related outcomes.Findings suggest that racial concordance is associated with increased interpersonal trust, reduced behavioral misinterpretation, enhanced family engagement, and buffered stress responses, particularly being present among racially and ethnically diverse populations.However, several studies reported mixed or null effects, highlighting the contextual variability of concordance and its dependence on factors such as relationship length and subgroup identity.Notably, none of the included studies directly examined concordance in ASD-specific interventions, reinforcing a critical gap in the literature.This review proposes a relational model of equity in autism care and underscores the need for ASD-focused empirical research that examines how racial concordance may serve as a culturally attuned, relationally grounded intervention mechanism.